#are trying to piece together things like not just a sequence of events but the resultant narrative. ''solving'' the identity & Role of

[unproduciblesmackdown]

you always knew marble hornets is good b/c fr from 2010 on the Many fans &/or the particularly Enthused &/or Dedicated &/or Lasting fans was noticeably to us all like hmm tending to be many people who are big fans of aLex Guy from the tunnel rip Brian Tim Questions Investigations Answers....i presume it still skews that way. i.e. Tastehavers i.e. Marble Hornets Is Good b/c it can resonate with queer experiences unlike horror that straight people are like "Hell Yeah truly this is good" about, which is a waste of everything

[hetalian-veteran]

The Draw of the Hetalia Fandom (and Why You Can Never Leave)

From the perspective of a fan of (technically) twelve years or so.

Something occurred to me a while back, and I wanted to share it to get other people's thoughts. I'll try to add funny pictures and gifs to break up the wall of text so it won't be as exhausting to read.

I made a post the other day about how the Hetalia fandom always draws you back in. This was, of course, based on the joke about how you can never really leave the Hetalia fandom. A joke you can find virtually everywhere you look in fan spaces online.

But this begs the question. Why? Why can't you ever truly leave the Hetalia fandom? What is it about this fandom that consistently draws you back in?

And note that people don't talk about Hetalia itself, but rather its fandom. You could stop watching the show or reading the comics for years, but the fandom is what won't fully leave you be.

(The Hetalia fandom every time you check to see if it's dead yet).

One answer I've heard has to do with the phenomenon known as Associative Memory, where you can learn and remember the relationship between unrelated items.

For example, you watch Hetalia, a series about the countries of the world personified as anime characters. These characters have their own personalities, traits, quirks, etc. And the more you watch the show and get into the fandom, the more you start to associate these things with one another.

For instance, someone can say the word Italy, and I'll start thinking about Feliciano Vargas. Or someone could say the name Matthew Williams, and I automatically associate that with Canada. Or I could see bushy eyebrows and immediately start thinking of APH England. Heck, someone starts talking about Vikings and my thoughts almost always go to the Viking Trio of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. I could go on, but you get the idea.

And there's also the fact that we live in a world full of the countries that the show has personified characters of, which would in turn likely remind you of Hetalia.

But there's something more here going on. I've thought about it for a long while, and I think I've realized one of the biggest reasons why you can't fully leave the fandom.

It's because of how versatile the characters of the series can be in fan content. Allow me to explain.

(Me preparing to explain to everyone the epiphany that came to me one dark, stormy night).

Hetalia is a series with literally no plot. Like, zero. Some episodes may impact each other, but the overall series is episodic in nature. The only episodes you'd have to watch in order would be the ones going over the miniature love story between Chibitalia and HRE. And then there's the sequence of episodes going over the Industrial Revolution in season seven, and then the sequence of episodes explaining the relationship between Czechia and Slovakia. But that's it. And the Industrial Revolution and Czechia and Slovakia episodes aired in the latter seasons, long after the fandom was already very big and well established.

The episodes are largely adaptations from the original webcomic and thus are all a bunch of skits haphazardly thrown together. So I'll reiterate what I said earlier; there is no real, canonical plot to Hetalia. There are canon events and facts about canon characters, but seeing as the show is largely skits, they aren't tied down to any real narrative.

(The Hetalia fandom whenever they're given a piece of canon they don't like).

This leaves a lot of room for headcanons. Which leads to fans sharing their headcanons online. And when headcanons get super popular, they become fanon. And when a piece of fanon gets super popular, where it finds itself getting mingled with fanart, fanfiction, and even fan theories, you'll have people who start to confuse it with actual canon. There's really a lot to be said for the wild fanon of Hetalia, but I'll get to that another day. I need to turn the focus back onto the characters themselves.

I'm just gonna put it out there. The Hetalia characters are largely one-note. This isn't to say there isn't some depth to a few of the characters, but these characters are largely the epitome of "what you see is what you get." Especially in the early days of the series. The characters all have a set of straightforward, basic character traits, with their interpersonal relationships often being displayed in a very simplistic manner.

For example, Italy is a pasta-loving coward who's a massive flirt. Germany is strict and authoritative with a no-nonsense attitude. Japan is quiet and soft-spoken, only speaking up when he feels the need. America is a bombastic dork with a hero complex. England is an arrogant stick in the mud. France is a hopeless romantic who flirts with anything that has a pulse.

(Me taking a moment to pause and push away the cringy middle school memories of me shamelessly fangirling in class).

And as I said, their relationships are typically portrayed as simplistic as well. Italy annoys Germany, but Germany doesn't want to get rid of him because he's one of his only friends. England and France hate each other. America is that hyper-extroverted friend trying to get his introverted friend, Japan, out of his shell. Switzerland and Lichtenstein have a sweet sibling dynamic. And Prussia and Austria are portrayed as old friends who like to antagonize one another.

Because of the way the characters and their interpersonal relationships are written, this also lends them open to a lot of headcanons and eventual fanon. Not to mention that most of the characters have canon, human names. So if you want to use these characters in a fanfiction, particularly one where you don't want to depict them as countries (which is most fanfics), you have names at the ready that you can use.

And because of the simple way the characters are written, you can potentially write or portray these characters however you want in fanwork without too many people complaining that someone "isn't in character." There is so much room for your own interpretations of the characters. As long as you keep some of their basic personality traits from the series intact, you can portray the characters however you want. Especially because there's no real canonical storyline to drag them down. Because of the lack of canon storyline, you don't have to worry about fanworks being canon-compliant, canon-divergent, or canon-adjacent.

(Fanfic writers when they realize canon cannot stop them from creating whatever they want).

Do you want to portray Romano as the notorious mafia boss, Lovino Vargas, in the 1930s? Go ahead. As long as you can keep some of his cowardly and stubborn nature intact, you can do what you want with little trouble.

Do you want to portray England as the infamous pirate, Arthur Kirkland, in the 17th century? As long as you maintain his disdain for France, have at it!

Do you want to write a college AU with all of the characters present? As long as you keep in mind their personalities and have a basic understanding of their interpersonal relationships, have fun!

Now you're probably sitting there thinking, "Big deal, people can create all kinds of fanwork, regardless of what its content is, or what property it's for. What makes the Hetalia fandom so special?"

It's special because, since Hetalia is a series with almost zero canonical storylines, and the characters are portrayed in such a simplistic way, both of which lend their way to boatloads of headcanons and fanon, as well as small scraps of canon information that we can choose to either ignore or elaborate like crazy on...

Hetalia is a freaking goldmine for creating all kinds of fan content.

(Hetalians when creating the 2p! variations of the characters, probably).

So much fan content is out there. From creepypastas, to Hetaoni, Dreamtalia, the 2p! characters, historically accurate AU's, school AU's, and so, so much more. All because the canon is just loose enough to allow all kinds of fan content to be created and not seem too far off from the series or characters.

And that fan content ends up being way, way more fun than the actual series itself! Don't get me wrong, I still love the show, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't (or currently don't) have a freaking blast every time I engage with fan content. The creativity is insane, and the fanon is even more fun and entertaining.

The reason you cannot fully leave the Hetalia fandom isn't just because of Associative Memory, but because of the immense amount of fan content and fanon where, because of the nature of the series, you can do, write, draw, and create whatever you want. You can project onto these characters and their stories and interpret them to your own personal tastes. And you know what? That's a heck of a lot of fun.

And there you go, that's my two cents.

[into-the-feniverse]

Finished reading Trigun/TriMax a couple days ago and have been feverishly trying to piece together a timeline, so here’s the result of that ✨

EDIT: as of 3/13/24 this has been UPDATED

For a more detailed timeline (with vol/ch marks): google sheet

Full res of the graphic (& other resources): bit.l/trigunresources

Notes & rest of the timeline under the cut!

Edits as of 3/13/24

The detailed spreadsheet is organized and color coded! If you'd like a more concise breakdown of events/see some of my reasoning behind certain time stamps feel free to skim through that

Changed where in the timeline the Maylene and Wolfwood events happened (originally where I had placed them would have made Maylene like 6 when she and Wolfwood reunited which is NOT correct)

moved where in the timeline Knives started collecting the GungHo Guns (at latest he started in 0090 (20 years before 0110) since it's noted that Monev has been training in a cellar for the past 20 years

Moved where Knives initially tracked down Conrad (felt like it needed to happen at least a decade before July)

Changed up some of the months (personally, I don't think the Ark launched in December, since that'd put Milly and Meryl's arrival to the colony in July, which wouldn't make sense. So I placed the ark launch in October which of course offset some of the other month stand ins)

Added an earth year for when Knives and Vash are born. The explanation is I think at minimum there was at least a 2 year period between them and Tesla (since Rem was around for that whole process). I do think it was more than that, but that’s the earliest possible year I think it could have happened. Personally I’m more in the camp of 5-10 years, but def not 50 like in tristamp

Old Notes:

If you see any typos or phrase inconsistencies: no you don’t 💕 (😭)

Blue text can be completely ignored, that’s just kinda my personal preference/wild guesstimating of when “exactly” those events happened

Blue lines can also be ignored, they’re also just rough guesstimates on where exactly in the timeline these could have happened

The distance of the lines from one another doesn’t really mean anything, I started trying to follow a system to notate when things happened really close together but it was//// not consistently done ngl

Fun fact: by the time Wolfwood leaves the orphanage Meryl is 18! And she was 14 at the time of July’s destruction

Additional fun fact: Brad is 17 when he and sensei meet up with Vash in the Factioned city (which I think is absolutely RIDICULOUS), and we know this because he was 4 the one/last time he had met Vash and it’s been 13 years since

It was noted by Karen, one of Meryl’s coworkers, that she and Milly had been on assignment with Vash for about 4 months. (Might be that they were out searching for him during that time as well, but I’m choosing to interpret it as they were actually with him for that amount of time)

I’m also working on a 98 timeline for comparison (but more like just sequence of events cause I don’t think I have the patience to sift through the lore quite as much… mainly making it just to clarify how the anime delineates from the manga)

I am//::: feeling v unhinged after this and feel like it could be improved/i need to do a more thorough read, but I’m calling it quits for now before I actually go insane (but hopefully some people will find it somewhat helpful!)

Also: if anybody has any notes to add or clarifications/corrections I would be more than happy to hear them 👂

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV S2 Musings - Tentative Timeline (Pt2: The Trial)

I've been struggling with this for a while, cuz this ish just don't make sense, AMC. (I fully expect S3 to gotcha/retcon/fix stuff, esp. since who knows what Armand's tinkered around with in Louis' head.) I split this timeline in 2 parts: Pt1 has everything from 2x1 - 2x6ish (text & chart versions of timeline); and Pt2 covers as much as I can understand from the Trial's shenanigans. (I'm just one person tryna figure out wtf is going on, so if y'all have any insights, please share!)

I've been grappling with the sequence of events that led to the Trial since 2x6 aired, when Armand "could not prevent" his CHOICE to stand back and let Louis' family be abducted & tortured & killed.

Armand was actually in cahoots with Santiago the whole time (writing/directing/editing the Trial script); so was he also lying/making excuses about why THE most powerful vampire with the Mind Gift wasn't reading his own coven's thoughts?

So, since we know Armand put false memories into Lou's head about the Trial (which ofc makes Louis' account more difficult to parse), and we know Armand knew all about Lestat/Bruce since the very first day, I've just been wondering how early the Trial was planned out.

Cuz the BIG question everyone's circling around is WHEN Lestat arrived in Paris, and WHY he didn't warn Louis that the coven was planning something.

Theories range from:

Les willingly participated in the Trial, deliberately acting with ill intent cuz he was mad about Mardi Gras; "it's their turn to hurt." Lesdaughter Truthers are wrong, Les DGAF about Claudia.

Les was unable to warn Louis or stop the Trial cuz he was captured, injured & manipulated/mind-fogged (a la the book canon)

Sam Reid (deliberately?) hemmed & hawed about Lestat going into the rehearsal/Trial acting on raw impulse, with no plan whatsoever, other than getting Louis (specifically) out alive

NGL, I think ALL of the above are to some degree true! 😅

But I lean toward Theory #2 most of all, cuz that's how the book events transpired. But I'll be the first to admit that #2 is deeply flawed & hard AF to defend/prove, based on what little we actually saw in 2x6, 2x7, and esp. 2x8. Cuz it really does seem like Les LET an awful lot of bad ish happen that he too could've prevented.

So I wanna put 2x6 into context this time, to try and piece things together. Cuz the math REALLY ain't mathin, AMC.

What we have thus far:

According to Armand in 2x8, he started lying to Louis about the coven preparing the Trial the night Madeleine was Turned in 2x6.

November 1945

Armand knew the FIRST NIGHT Louis & Claudia arrived in Summer 1945 that they were lying about Lestat/"Bruce."

Spring 1946 - Spring 1947

The coven was suspicious the entire time--it's esp. obvs. as Santiago grills them about "Chicago":

Santiago vs Claudia (2x3) around Spring 1946, "Stick with it, Puce! You're almost there."

Santiago vs Louis (2x4) around Spring 1947, "New Orleans!" (It makes sense that it would take Santiago longer to confront Louis, as Armand kept complaining about Louis never being around the Theatre x x)

Late 1947 / Early 1948

post-September 1947, Santiago had already stolen Claudia's diaries & passed them around to the coven; and Celeste & Estelle had already interrogated Roget about Lestat.

Did Armand know Santiago was in Louis' apartment going through their things (while Claudia would either be out with Madeleine, or at the Theatre under curfew) --

--and did he know the coven was reading her Diaries right in front of him while Santiago & Celeste & Estelle were interrogating Roget about Lestat?

Esp. since all of this goes down in 2x6 BEFORE Armand had even met Madeleine & Louis/Claudia asked him to Turn her!

We know that by late 1947 / early 1948 (when Louis bought the Wols, then came home to find Claudeleine in his coffin, then took them to Armand to ask for the bite), Armand already knows that Lou & Claudia wanna do their own thing with Madz; committing the same "crime" that got Santiago's Maker killed--making a vamp without the Coven Master's permission--but ofc, Louis is NOT in Armand's coven.

Late 1948 - Early 1949

In the very next scene, we get Santiago & Sam in cahoots about Godot's projections/scripts. Patterns of behavior indicate that Armand LET this all happen, and only pretended that "the buffoon was in the audience."

In my Timeline Pt1, I surmised that the very latest Sam could've finished the Godot script was early 1949, cuz IRL Sam Beckett wrote the play b/t October 1948 - January 1949.

Spring - Summer 1949

So by Spring of 1949, Sam would be free to turn his attention to drafting a NEW script...for the Trial.

April 1949: Sam writes the Trial script.

(Is it JUST his half, or is Les already awake & in Paris & writing the other half with him? OR is Les awake & just in telepathic communication with the coven, and has no idea they're asking him questions to incriminate Claudia & Louis?)

2x5 & 2x6 also give us some very important contextual dates! Loumand references a bunch of events that happened around the same time, which can help approximate when Tuan's projections were being made.

LOUIS: The Berlin Blockade ended in May. The Geneva Convention was agreed in August. Some of the front pages from that year. But if you look in the filler, in the back pages. Strange crimes reported. ARMAND: A telescopic lens stolen from the Observatory at Meudon. A film company shooting the crime thriller 'Porte D'Orient' delayed when its inventory of color film stock is snatched. LOUIS: A gang of drunkards, hanging off of the side of the Eiffel Tower, all facing south by southwest, all muttering in unison--gone by the time police arrive by elevator. ARMAND: Crimes all left unsolved.

May 12, 1949: Berlin Blockade ends

June 21, 1949: Paris Observatory's missing lens reported stolen. (Because these are newspaper reports, we might also assume the actual time of the theft was the night before the article was published (June 20). But who knows.)

June 23, 1949: Oriental Port color film stock reported stolen; filming delayed. (Because these are newspaper reports, we might also assume the actual theft of the events was the night before the article was published (June 22). But who knows.)

The color film stock being stolen that delayed Oriental Port's filming is a VERY nice touch, cuz the movie was released in 1950, and was the first French film to use Agfa-Gevacolor film, which had only been available to the public since January 1949 (x x). So the film nerds at AMC really stay on top of their research! 👌

July 1949: Armand distracts Louis with library outings:

ARMAND: Ah, July, 1949. The reading room. LOUIS: Mmm. We broke into the same library every night that month, hypnotized security, as one does, flipped the lights, laid our backs on long tables and stared up at the ceiling. ' DANIEL: Hot. ARMAND: Iron pillars holding up terracotta domes, a light trick that made the ceiling appear higher than it was. LOUIS: And why not pass a month that way? An effortless, eternal life ahead of us. Funny thing, trying to remember what occupied one's time when one was ignorant of the plotting around him.DANIEL: Grab that. LOUIS: Santiago had broken into our apartme--I'm sorry. Grab what?

Louis implies that the "plotting around him" started in July 1949--or at least, that's when HE surmised (in Dubai, NOT Paris) that Armand had "started lying to me." Ofc, 2x8 would reveal that Armand was in cahoots with the coven since jump.

We can thus assume that this was when the bulk of the projector images based on Claudia's diaries were being drawn (whenever Armand wasn't distracting Louis with dates to the library). They already have the Agfa-Gevacolor film, and the Observatory's fancy projection lens, so that Tuan can animate whatever Sam had already written for the script. "But they had their Technicolor film. Tuan Pham's wizardry with it."

And ofc, they'd want to corroborate the diaries with Lestat's own testimony. (Esp. since it's clear from Claudia's diaries that Les ISN'T dead, just thrown in the dump--cuz Claudia KNOWS the only way to be sure you've killed a vamp is to burn them, and she's mad AF that they didn't do that to Les cuz Lou freaked TF out.)

Again: did they only call Lestat after they had Claudia's diaries (once they knew there was a chance he wasn't dead after all)? The dates seem to imply that this was the case--that Armand & Santiago & co. had suspected Lestat was alive ever since 1945, but it was only until 1949 that they bothered to contact him.

Fall 1949

September 5, 1949: report of Eiffel Tower climbed by "muttering drunkards." (Because these are newspaper reports, we might also assume the actual time of the events was the night before the article was published (Sept 4). But who knows.)

The September 5th date is the most telling: IF Armand is telling truth, this would be when the coven contacted Lestat, as seen in Tuan's projection during the Trial.

So, IF this is the truth & S3 doesn't retcon anything, the rehearsals with Lestat would've had to have started in September, after 3 months of Tuan's prep (the thefts started in June); and 5 months of Sam's writing & Armand's edits.

February 6, 1940 - September 5, 1949: Lestat's "state of repose" ends when the coven "wakes" him. (IF this is true, Roget was right that Les was just asleep, taking a long AF dirt nap. IF Les was awake before then, he was only motivated to come to Paris when the coven climbed the Eiffel Tower & told him the Trial was soon--likely still too emotionally damaged / psychologically injured to leave NOLA.)

Again, the big question is: what was Les up to while he was in Paris, b4 the Trial? Was he free to come & go as he pleased (in which case: why TF didn't he warn Lou?!); OR was he locked up (a la the books)?

post-September 5, 1949: Madeleine is Turned.

Right after the scene of Dubai!Loumand describing all the "strange crimes," we get the scene of Paris!Loumand in the park, discussing Madz, right b4 she's Turned that night (Lou's in the same clothes).

THIS is the night Armand claimed he started lying to Lou, ("They gave me a choice"). And again: we know even THAT was a lie too, cuz UNLESS Madz was turned the exact same night that Les arrived AND wrote his half of the script AND rehearsed it (meaning Les wasn't starved/tortured at all), then Armand had PLENTY of time BEFORE Madz Turned to work on the script & direct the rehearsals.

The same night of Madz's Turning, Armand moves into Louis' apartment (and Claudia's coffin 🤮), with his magnolia sprig. And speaking of plants....

September-October-ish, 1949: Claudeleine finds the X, planting flowers outside Saint Denis.

I assume "cold things" are the cold corpses Claudeleine is burying; that "become warm" metaphorically, when plants/flowers grow over their graves. I know nothing about autumn weather in France. Going by clothes, it looks like it's still nice & warm, cut comfy enough for light jackets. I also know nothing about flowers, or what seasons they grow in France. But apparently Claudeleine's Fall flowers are fine:

Lavender: usually stops flowering in late August or mid-September; definitely by mid-October.

Sweet Iris: has high cold resistance, and goes dormant from November - March-ish.

Peony: apparently there are regular peonies & tree peonies, and they both like colder weather--the regular ones go dormant around November. Plenty seem to be ok in Fall, up to October-ish, that you can get at nurseries. And they really like bone meal as fertilizer, omg. XD

(My headcanon wants to assume that Claudia only agreed to visit Louis in Paris either cuz it was gonna be her birthday (9/21), OR his birthday (10/4). 💔 Cuz misogynoir, I'd bet Monopoly money it was Claudia's; DOOMED by the narrative! 😭)

Late 1949 (September/October): The Trial.

(Guys. D'you reckon those nasty theatre kids held the Trial on frikkin Halloween? 🤣)

Late 1949 (November-ish): Louis is kept buried alive in the wet room for at least 1 month after the Trial, before Armand finally pulls him out the coffin.

The latest the Trial could've taken place is October, in order for OVER a month to have passed and the fire still happens in 1949.

VERY Late 1949 (November/December): Louis slaughters the coven, the "Great Fire of 1949" send the Theatre des Vampires up in flames. 🔥

(The Talamasca folder in 2x3 calls it the "Great Fire;" which makes me giddy, cuz we also have the "Great Burnings" in the books, related to Akasha. I love how Akasha & Louis are paralleled, just slaughtering vamps with the Fire Gift, bless.)

1950

May 24 - June 4, 1950: The French Championship of 1950 takes place at Roland-Garros. Spoiler: the Australians lost that year. 😂

[wordsandrobots]

'Real' robot? No thanks

I shan't be wasting time hang-wringing over the idea of a Gundam show from the point of view of the setting's antagonists. This is a well-worn and perfectly legitimate approach, and in any case, Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) goes out of its way to emphasise the humanity of the Principality of Zeon's soldiers. There are scouts who bend their orders to aid to civilians, wannabe special-forces who take the time to gawk at the teen prodigy who thwarted their attempt to blow up the Gundam, pilots who jump ship rather than go down with their mobile suits, and injured grunts who cling to family pictures while bleeding out in the desert. Even the actual *villains* of Gundam 79 – the Zabi family and their hangers-on – are generally presented as functioning people with loves and motivations beyond conquest. Only Gihren is utterly without morals. You know, the guy who took being compared to Hitler as a compliment? Garma, Degwin, Dozle, and even Kycilia all have moments of humanity, in spite of their reprehensible actions.

So yes, of course there are people fighting for Zeon because it's their job, because they believe the promise of spacenoid independence, because they buy into newtype theory, or simply because circumstances force them to. That's the kind of story Gundam is: the tragedy of people enduring a war driven by forces above their heads and beyond their control, who are just trying to make it home alive. If you don't get that, or that the Federation is squarely in the position of 'lesser evil but still a callous nation state doing dubious things to secure victory' from episode one, I don't know what to tell you. You've missed the point. I'm sorry, you just have.

There is nothing wrong with the premise 'wouldn't fighting against the Gundam be like living in a horror movie?' Indeed, I will go further: that is a good premise for a story.

But Netflix's Mobile Suit Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance is not a good story. It is, at best, a serviceable one, trotting from A to B with enough narrative cohesion and character beats to string the set-pieces together. By and large it manages an inoffensive momentum, unfolding a predictable sequence of events with reasonable competency. If I was not hugely entertained, I was not especially put off, either. They even remembered to turn on the contrast for the nighttime battles.

The biggest innovation displayed here is that this production was rendered in Unreal Engine as full CGI, eschewing Gundam's conventional animation style. In my view, that's also the key to its biggest problems. Let's take a quick spoiler break and I'll try to unpack what I mean.

I guess go watch the show before proceeding?

OK, so, there was a point in the middle of Requiem for Vengeance when I found myself questioning the physics of beam sabers. I'd never thought before about why what is essentially a burning stream of energy can be blocked by a bit of metal with a super-heated edge, or indeed by another such stream, because within the animation style usually used to depict such things, they are clearly physical in their interaction with the world. As solid as lightsabers and therefore as capable of acting like real swords.

But Requiem makes the decision to depict the Gundam's saber as, essentially, the jet from a blowtorch. Because that's what this *is*, isn't it? A narrow fountain of plasma? So it looks like fire, you can see the Zaku's heat-hawk through the Gundam's blade, and suddenly I'm wondering – how does that work? Why does the axe stop it instead of passing through? How does this obviously non-physical blade react as if it were a physical object?

There are any number of technobabble reasons you might give for how this works. Forcefields! It's probably forcefields. But what struck me was the beat of 'huh' I experienced, where I asked something I'd never previously *needed* to, even though it always existed as a legitimate question of the sci-fi mumbo-jumbo being deployed, and how that was a direct result of stylistic choices made when the Gundam was reinterpreted through the lens of CGI 'realism'.

Ah, yes. Realism. That elusive quality chased by film-makers and game-developers the world over. Or, specifically chased by a lot of big, mainstream studios who've decided it is vitally important the supernatural and the superscientific be placed within what is recognisably the real world.

In terms of such codifying modern works as 2008's Iron Man, this is primarily about papering over the stitching between what is filmed using actors and what is painted in later. In theory, something rendered entirely by computer does not have to worry about this. However, as many a 'triple-A' computer game has proven, the aspiration towards photographic quality remain. Characters and objects are honed so as to mimic the appearance and texture of real people and objects, with greater verisimilitude to life being a near-universally unquestioned goal.

I won't argue this doesn't have merit as a technical exercise. The results can be impressive. What I will say is: realism is worthless if it removes interest, and useless if it sacrifices coherence. The beam saber example is an instance of what I mean by the latter. Within Gundam 79, we apprehend immediately that the saber and the heat-hawk are of a kind, possessing an energised glow that is nevertheless opaque and physical. Within Requiem's portrayal, however, they no longer adhere to a visual language in which their interaction make sense. You cannot block an axe with a blowtorch flame. A minor illustration, yes, but it captures the tension created by transposing such elements into a more 'realistic' style.

Another may be found in the treatment of Zeon's various military vehicles. These are a bizarre selection of sci-fi objet d'art, from the aerodynamically questionable Dopp fighter jets to Magella tanks that can launch their turrets into open flight. They are strikingly weird designs that make little sense yet function perfectly inside their context. Where another, earlier anime would have had them belong to an alien species, Gundam is the show that pioneered 'what if the bad guys were human too' for the mecha genre, so they merely represent a design logic alien to the Earth Federation, which favours bold, blocky shapes more closely based on extant military hardware.

In Requiem, the Zeonic weirdness is deliberately muted. The Dopps are streamlined, literally flattened into a more traditional jet fighter profile. One Magella does attempt to launch its turret only to be blown apart before it can rise more than a couple of feet. Otherwise, they're just treated as ordinary tanks. And it's easy to see what the artists were doing here: "let's take these weird 70s designs and make them look like real tanks/jets." The result, unfortunately, is a dilution of the clear distinction between Zeon and Federation tech.

If you've watching the original Gundam and its sequels, you'll know how easy it is to tell at a glance which side something belongs to. Looking at them in stills, it is still reasonably clear these are meant to be Zeon vehicles. But in motion, it often took me a good few seconds to be sure I wasn't seeing their Federation equivalents. Visual interest doesn't exist purely for its own sake, after all; it serves to clarify the action. Plus, it seems to me that trying to downplay the wilder aspects of these designs actually draws attention towards those aspects. The Zeonic alienness has its own explanatory power; reducing it raises more questions, not fewer.

Lest you think me some terrible killjoy who doesn't like fun, I'm actually incredibly sympathetic to 'realistic' overhauls of classic designs. Have you seen what I spent years doing for the Daleks? Aesthetic overhauls aren't something I object to, nor do I think 'realism' as practised by the MCU and triple-A game developers is intrinsically a waste of time. What I am trying to demonstrate is Requiem's relation to its source material. It posits a story taking place exactly contemporaneously with episode 25 of Gundam 79, portraying the Battle of Odessa, the great Federation push-back that ejects Zeon forces from Earth. This is what was happening 'just off screen', depicted in a style actively at odds with that of the original

But not entirely at odds with it. Which brings us to another problem: an unwillingness to commit fully to the new style.

The big twist in Requiem episode 4 is that after being chased down by the Gundam and just barely managing to drive it off, Captain Iria Solari of the Red Wolf mobile suit squadron is recruited to go capture an example of the Federation's new mass-produced GM 'suit, so Zeon can identify its weaknesses. The hunted get to become the hunter, infiltrating a Federation base and attempting to hijack a couple of GMs, only for the Gundam to scupper things. All well and good. Not a bad swerve. Enables some useful developments.

Except this plan is delivered into the plot by a Zeon major general who appears to have stepped in from a different production entirely. Specifically, from Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, because this is none other than Major General Yuri Kellerne, he of the Wolverine haircut and unfortunate disagreements with certain scientific officers (that is, it is unfortunate he should have disagreed with a man possessing so few qualms about massacring his own side).

It is truly surreal to have a character who looks like he actually belongs in a Gundam show enter the scene. I was quite impressed prior to this with the depiction of another character, Major Ronet, who captures the essence of a villain-of-the-week Zeon officer using Requiem's style. He looks entirely of a piece with the rest, while still being recognisably a certain type of character.

Kellerne though? For fuck's sake, he's got a full-blown anime bouffant. Juxtaposed with Solari's achingly realistic design, it's just – bad. This is bad. It's a stylistic clash that makes it impossible to take these scenes seriously. Not because either style is problematic on its own, but because they cannot work together.

It's worth pausing to consider Kellerne's native entry in the franchise, because 08th MS represents an older trend of revisiting the original setting. Starting with Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, this saw the release of OVAs with a superior quality of animation and a more ground-level take on events of the Zeon/Federation war. In many respects, Requiem is positioned as the successor to these series, as Kellerne's cameo makes overt.

The thing is, War in the Pocket, Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory and 08th MS are all animes. Yes, they render the action with greater fidelity than Gundam 79. But they don't restyle it the way Requiem attempts to. The Dopp fighter is a great example of this. Compare the 08th MS version to the original and you will see that it merely adds extra layers of detail. It doesn't make it make more sense. Likewise for the character models. They look better than Gundam 79, by certain metrics. They still follow conventional anime aesthetics. You can't drop a design from this line of shows straight into a 'realistic' depiction and expect that to work.

Why does any of this matter? None of these issues exceed the threshold of nit-picking. OK, they're mildly distracting, but is there really a huge problem here?

Well, first, there is a philosophical underpinning to the drive for 'realism' we ought to grapple with, namely the idea only live-action and live-action-alike 'count'. I confess to having little time for this line of thought: the stylistic 'realism' discussed up to now matters far less than emotional or experiential realism. That is to say, whether something presents itself using stick-figures or a hyper-photographic style is not as important as whether it can convey the stakes, pathos, and other meat of a story. Art presents a plethora of options for communicating a message. Deciding one is intrinsically more valuable than the rest is a woefully narrow view of creativity. Traditional, non-realistic animation can be as emotionally arresting as any live performance. Why, therefore, should it be necessary to adapt it into a life-like style?

Second, there is the incomplete commitment to 'realism' that plagues Requiem and, I would argue, the entire concept of approaching works such as Gundam in this manner. Sure, stylistic 'realism' isn't about being strictly 'realistic'. It's about achieving a specific texture to the unreality that is functionally indistinguishable from that of the real elements. Yet doesn't the inclusion of a 17.5m-tall humanoid robot suits automatically grant you a get-out-of-realism-free card? If you have something that wild in play, why go to the effort of making it look like a real-world object? And if you're going to arbitrarily throw out the pretence for the sake of gratuitous continuity, what's the point of trying to begin with?

This circles close to what Requiem is, materially. If I use the phrase 'official fan-fiction', I hope you'll understand that's not necessarily derogatory. What I mean is something primarily homaging and reflecting a pre-existing work, rather than more straightforwardly building off it. 'Fan-fic' because it is bounded by what is already there; 'official' because it has the backing of corporate ownership and thus is positioned as more than merely people playing with the toys they enjoy. It's a category of derivative works into which I'd put previous projects such as Gundam Unicorn's animated adaptation – ring-fenced by an established canon, whatever their individual merits.

General Kellerne's stylistically disruptive presence is one example of the short-comings of such an approach. His design looks that way out of deference to 08th MS Team, whether or not it fits next to the other visuals (a side-effect of trying to cram him into Requiem's style is that he appears off-model anyway!).

Another is the plot. We might grant that doing Gundam-by-the-numbers is a self-contained introduction to the series' themes for a novice, but there isn't anything here those of us who've watched the anime(s) haven't seen a dozen times over. Even Solari's pocket-watch feels borrowed from 08th MS.

Now, credit where it's due: Requiem does not downplay the newtype angle. The psychic powers built up to over the course of Gundam 79 and made central to its sequels are usually the first thing ejected when the franchise tries to be more 'serious' and 'gritty'. It was a pleasant surprise to see them embraced. Solari is explicitly a newtype, with all the corresponding traits (supernaturally good pilot, able to sense threats, experiences predictive flashes etc). This is neatly used to establish some of the philosophy behind Zeon's cause, since most of our characters are already aware of newtype theory (humans moving to space tap into skills not previously needed) by dint of being on the side that uses this as justification for invading the Earth.

As in the source material, newtypes serve as a metaphor for the potential of each new generation. Solari was a talented violinist before the war, able to play near-impossible melodies, and this ability has been conscripted in much the same way OG protagonist Amuro Ray's mechanical genius was turned to murder. Equally, the central tragedy in Requiem resolves into newtype-on-newtype violence, as the pilot of the Gundam relentlessly hunting the Zeon soldiers is revealed to be a frightened teenager, paralleling both Solari's son, to whom she is fighting to return, and Solari herself, as someone struggling for their life in a war-zone.

I watching this straight after binging the original Gundam series (I'd previously seen the more refined compilation movies) and was struck there by how brief Amuro's interaction with fellow newtype Lalah Sune is prior to inadvertently killing her in battle. Then I remembered that's the point. These are two people sharing an identical potential for transforming the world, made opponents by circumstance, who understand one another immediately and intimately in the exact instant it is too late to matter. Amuro's cry that he has done something awful he cannot take back is not overlooking the other deaths he's responsible for; rather it is admitting the unique horror of lost possibility.

Following an encounter on the Federation base, Solari recognises the boy pursuing her is equally scared and out of his depth and thus attempts to talk him down. She even succeeds, reaching substitute!Amuro (hey look another traumatised child soldier who executes wild violence in a berserker-like fashion using a hyper-advanced military prototype; what are the odds?) and evoking his sympathy with her status as a mother (characterisation I'd be more annoyed by if Solari wasn't presented functionally identical to the trope of a father desiring to return to his family).

Then, immediately after saving Solari from being crushed by falling spaceship debris, substitute!Amuro is fatally stabbed in the back by another Zeon soldier.

Here we reach the crux of my dislike for Requiem. It has already muddied the clean Federation/Zeon divide and Gundam's internal physics in service of its chosen style, then compromised that style anyway in the name of slavishness to canonicity. Now, during what is position as the emotional climax, it openly rejects the visual language of newtypes.

Solari's powers are portrayed using vocally-stated unease and emotional connection to other individuals (as is standard), and a pair of dream sequences – one prophetic with respect to the Gundam pilot, another tying into newtypes' ability to draw in the souls of those who die around them. Performing at a darkened opera house, Solari's red dress slowly washes outwards, becoming a bloody wave as the audience is revealed to consist of the dead Zeon soldiers she failed to save. It's an arresting visual, as is the fiery descent into her own pocket watch (a souvenir from her dead husband, who was also conscripted into the war) that marks the earlier dream. We also see a brief shot of the Gundam staring straight back at her as she senses its presence on a distant battlefield. These are all effectively done and I genuinely enjoyed them.

Crucially, however, Requiem does not deploy the kind of over-layering that Gundam 79, Zeta Gundam, ZZ Gundam and the other follow-ups use to show the deep connections developed by newtypes. In the animes, in addition to visions and flashes of awareness, we have full-on mind-to-mind communication where people converse across voids of colour and light. Newtypes appear in ghostly form, too, interacting with the living during and after their deaths. There are also the obligatory glowing auras, cuing the viewer into supernatural happenings.

Requiem's 'realistic' style seemingly does not permit such things to occur in the waking world. That is to say, there is no reason you couldn't depict the standard newtype visuals in CGI, but this show opts not to. If I were to hazard a guess, given the restriction of overt psychedelia to dream sequences and what they did to the Zenoic designs, I would say the aritsts thought it would look silly.

The problem is, how do you then portray newtype connections? In the scene where Solari convinces substitute!Amuro to stop, we get a couple of cutaways to the kid in his cockpit, superposing with his Gundam's movements. That is a great decision, since the point of the newtype visuals is the characters looking past the armour and understanding the person within (not always a good thing, since antagonism can exist despite the link, but the central conceit is always to grasp the essence of somebody else). In these brief moments, we see, as Solari does, the human being, not the mechanical monster.

But the boy's subsequent death is just… the Gundam gets stabbed and keels over, and Solari is grief-stricken. That's it. No manifested ghost, psychic trauma conveyed by voice lines alone, a total absence in this crucial, heart-rending instant of substitute!Amuro's humanity. Just the destruction of property. The death of the monster, not the scared child.

If there had been one additional cutaway to the boy in the cockpit, I think this could have worked. A single shot of him looking at Solari in the second before being stabbed in the back. Something, anything, to imply the connection crucial to this scene. I am honestly baffled as to why it's not there. I feel I'm looking at a picture where a couple of critical numbers weren't coloured in.

To be clear, I don't personally care for the newtype concept as executed in the 'Universal Century' Gundam shows. I'm not annoyed by this because I'm wedded to the idea or the visual conceits. I'm annoyed by the incompetence of failing to land an obvious, even required emotional beat. The finale of Requiem for Vengeance is built around Solari confronting substitute!Amuro. She risks her chance to join the Zeon retreat from Earth – and thus of reuniting with her son – to help take down Federation forces endangering the departing space capsules. She then compounds this by attempting to convince the Gundam pilot to let everyone go, and ultimately abandons any possibility of returning home out of grief over his death. This is a life-changing encounter for her, as is normal for newtypes pushed into fighting each other.

In my opinion, the show does not sell that anywhere near as well as it could have. Further, it betrays the very concept of the newtype connection by leaving substitute!Amuro to be represented by his Gundam rather than his actual self in his final moments. There are cases where other newtypes meet such abrupt ends. Quess' death in Char's Counterattack springs immediately to mind. But that is a moment of a profound lack of communication, which is not what's happening here.

Animes such as the original Gundam shows can move seamlessly between high technology and visual metaphors for empathy without underselling either one. That they are not attempting to look 'real' provides the advantage of absolute coherence. Beam sabers, flying tanks, psychic powers – there are no joins to airbrush away. Everything is unreal, so everything fits together. A switch in medium and style creates the challenge of reinterpreting those disparate elements so they remain coherent. Ultimately, while Requiem for Vengeance has a good try at pulling everything across, it fails, not just at creating 'realism', but at capturing the conceptual depth of what it is assaying.

Being official fan-fic of the Battle of Odessa – being, essentially, 'the Gundam story' in miniature – invites unfavourable comparison with the original work. Unshackled from that, I suspect it could have done more to establish its own visuals, remove incongruities and find better means of conveying its emotional core. As it stands, I have to wonder if there's any sound argument for live-action-alike Gundam. Even the dream sequences don't provide something unique to this style. You could do the same in traditional animation and trivially push it further. So what, precisely, is gained by telling this story this way?

That's the question Requiem for Vengeance has left me pondering. And hey, if you want to answer with 'but it looks cool', fair enough. I'm writing way too much about my personal gripes with a perfectly passable piece of gratuitous mecha porn, simply because I found a more interesting complaint to make than “why the fuck didn't they hire somebody who knew how do facial animations?”

As for Captain Solari, she closing-monologues herself to Africa to join a Zeon remnant group and fight to give children a future without war. Never quite been sure how mecha pilots in these things envision that working, if I'm honest. Oh, and, uh, I guess nobody tell her that if she survives the next seventeen years, there's a decent chance she's going on a suicide run against the Federation spearheaded by a traumatised teenager strapped into a murder machine.

That might put a slight damper on what Netflix's music captions assure me is a heroic ending.

[A note to check you read all the way to the end: obviously the screenshot from Cucuruz Doan's Island shows CGI mobile suit models. But that's CGI aping traditional anime, rather than an attempt at realism. This is why I've been careful to talk about style, not medium.]

[humbledragon669]

S1E5 – The Doomsday Option Write Up P1 - Saturday (The last day of the World) up to "the wiggle on"

Let’s just get stuck straight in with this episode, shall we? Because that’s exactly what the episode itself does – we’re not really given any clues to remember where it is we’re picking up from (and given the way the previous episode’s events were stitched together, that’s a little surprising). So what do we have? Crowley, looking stony faced, driving in his usual fashion. Oh, and the Bentley has chosen to play Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend” as he speeds around London’s crowded roads. Maybe there is a little clue there after all. And when things are made more explicit for us, we’re shown that Crowley is trying to reach Aziraphale:

Aside from the fact that the number has been labelled as Aziraphale’s “work” number (which makes me wonder if there’s also a “home” contact somewhere in Crowley’s phone), the picture in the background is one of flames. I’m pretty sure Crowley wouldn’t have done that himself – it’s my thinking that this is foreshadowing for him, so it’s no wonder he’s driving as fast as he possibly can to get to the book shop.

Moving on, to Crowley’s entrance into the bookshop. There are two things I’d like to pick up on from his actual entrance. The first is that we see him miracle the door both open and closed, but for the first time there is no accompanying miracle noise, of any variety. There’s the noise of the bell on the door ringing, but no miracle sound effect. This is perhaps simply because there’s a lot of other noise and music going on at the same time, but it just struck me as odd because it’s different. The other thing I want to pick up on, which is still to do with the soundtrack, is that the Bentley’s choice of music follows Crowley into the bookshop, now playing in an off-kilter way via a warped record on Aziraphale’s gramophone. I think this opens up a really interesting can of worms about the reason behind pieces of music transforming into something else, but I want to give it some proper thought and time so I think I’ll write a dedicated post about it.

Now, the collective heart of the fandom breaks more than a little bit when Crowley storms into the bookshop screaming Aziraphale’s name without considering his own safety, right? How about when, for the first time in the season, refers to Aziraphale as his best friend in an angry tirade of abuse once he realises he’s not there in the shop anymore? The fact that he somehow senses that Aziraphale isn’t there is one thing, but have a little think about this: if it hasn’t already occurred to you, this will be the first time in 6000 years that Crowley has rushed to Aziraphale’s rescue and been too late. That particular gem of understanding came to me as I was writing this, and honestly it destroyed me more than a little bit. Crowley’s ability to sense Aziraphale’s absence however allows him to move straight from denial to anger in the stages of grief, and boy is he pissed.

Right before we go into the opening credits for this episode (is this the shortest opening sequence for the series? It’s less than 2 minutes long!), we see Adam again, and there is no doubt that the Hellish powers that reside within him are taking control. If the glowing red eyes weren’t enough (I’m sure his eyes would have matched Dog’s if he hadn’t already eroded all the evil away from the Hellhound), the colour has all been washed out of this scene. It feels really grey and quite lifeless, in contrast to the bright and natural tones from previous scenes in the same place.

Now, Crowley’s exit from the book shop. As with his entrance, there’s no miracle sound as the doors open or close. Perhaps more importantly, it doesn’t actually look like Crowley does anything to close the doors as he leaves the shop. There’s no clicking of the fingers as we’re used to seeing – those doors close entirely on their own. Forcefully. There’s maybe a slightly forceful shoulder movement that coincides with the doors slamming, but that could just be Crowley’s signature swagger. Food for thought I think, it might be something I’ll look into in a bit more detail when I explore the music stuff I mentioned earlier. And speaking of music, how truly appropriate it is that we’re now treated to Queen’s “Somebody To Love”? Because with Aziraphale gone, Crowley has nobody to love anymore does he? And he is devastated about it. So devastated he takes his glasses off in public (which I think is the only time we ever see this happen).

As an aside, I noticed a couple of frames during this rewatch where the sign above the door of the bookshop is slightly obscured, and you can only really make out the “C” of the “Co”.

I’ve known the sign says “A.Z. Fell and Co” for a while, and wondered what the purpose of the “and Co” part of the title was (because of course we know that there are no other business partners involved in the running of the book shop), but it was only on this rewatch that the penny dropped. Having an “and Co” at the end, if you shorten the title to its component parts, gives you “A and C”. And didn’t I feel like a dumbass when I realised that one. It’s been staring us in the face the whole time, written above the bookshop entrance – a declaration of the partnership. I do not believe it to be a coincidence that the name written on the sheet for the telemarketer later in the episode is Cowwley, providing a further connection to the “and Co” reference. And did you notice the response Crowley gave the firefighter when asked he was the owner of the bookshop?

Do I look like I run a bookshop?

Oh Crowley. He didn’t ask you if you ran it, he asked you if you owned it. More food for thought.

I don’t have a lot to say about the next scene with Shadwell and Madame Tracy, other than to point out that we have another instance of the episode title being referred to within the scene itself – Shadwell refers to himself as “the Doomsday Option”. And although we have a direct reference to the lurid pink whip that he finds buried within the mountain of soft toys (and you have to love the whipcrack sound we hear on exiting this scene to go with this discovery), nothing is ever said about the fluffy pink handcuffs equally hidden in plain sight:

Quick question about Aziraphale’s arrival in Heaven. What’s the issue with his leg? As soon as he tries to walk on it, he calls attention to it in what appears to be pain. Not only did we not see anything happen to his leg in his discorporation scene, but technically he no longer possesses a body and in theory shouldn’t feel pain at all.

Do you remember all the way back in episode 3 when I mentioned that Aziraphale was the only one of the angels to be wearing any sort of colour or pattern, indicating that it was perhaps his own personal touch rather than part of a Heavenly uniform? No? Well, let me refresh your memory:

Well, now that he has arrived in Heaven without his human body or clothing and somewhat against his will, his trademark tartan touches have disappeared. His clothes are all varying shades or white and cream, with no colours or patterns, further strengthening the point I made when I brought it up previously. And regardless of how unwillingly he arrived in Heaven, it appears that his superiors were always adamant that he was going to be turning up – they’ve allocated him a platoon. As much as I know that Aziraphale can be an absolute kickass when he needs to be, the idea of him being in charge of soldiers at war at this point just feels laughable to me. And his confused expression would suggest he feels the same way.

And perhaps the reason Aziraphale was limping towards the dispensing table after his arrival was because he doesn’t seem to know he is no longer in possession of an actual human body?

We’re about to get something we’ve been waiting for for quite a while. Aziraphale has finally come to terms with the fact that he isn’t on one particular side just because that’s where other beings expect him to be.

These couple of lines say so much to me about where Aziraphale’s morality lies at this moment in the timeline. He cannot renounce his angelic nature – it’s what he is after all – but he can reject what other beings believe that nature should consist of. It must hurt him to declare himself a pathetic example of what he is, particularly when he has always prided himself in actually being a very good example of a Heavenly being, of being “Good”. And we as the audience know that his nature is more in keeping with what we would like to believe Heavenly beings would be like – compassionate, caring, and kind. But really it’s Aziraphale’s free will that makes him all of these things – the one thing he told the archangels in the previous episode was something that wasn’t for angels, only for humans.

One last thing about this scene, and I’m sorry (not sorry), but it’s sound related again. There’s a little harp glissando and accompanying noise (two in fact) in the soundtrack to signify that Aziraphale has had an idea. It’s not dissimilar to the noise we hear when he does a miracle. I don’t think there’s anything important about it, I just like to draw attention to the little details sometimes.

What I do think is important is that Aziraphale’s realisation is that the powers of angels and demons are not actually very dissimilar, and may even be the same. It’s not really highlighted too much, but ultimately I think the main difference between the powers that angels and demons have isn’t capability but intent.

I’m going to skip quickly over the next scene in the woods because… well, see, here’s the thing. I don’t like it when things… don’t look right. I know, I know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Let me try and phrase it a bit better. The shots of The Them when they either don’t have a mouth or where their smiles are stretched too far for their faces FREAK ME THE FUCK OUT. Like, remember when people had those filters for Snapchat where they switched faces? That was a dreadful time for me. They didn’t look right. So I don’t like this scene in the woods. Let’s move on. Quickly.

Now we all know how much love birds get in this series. Ducks, swans, nightingales, even the occasional lark. Which is why my attention was drawn to the singular bird singing in the background during the scene in Anathema’s bedroom. It stood out to me because it wasn’t that long ago that a tornado was blowing right outside the window, and now you can hear a bird singing (if you listen really carefully). I am no birdsong expert, and I can barely hear it as it is, but if anybody can figure out what kind of bird it is, I’d be interested to know. It might be nothing, just some ambient noise from filming, but birds offer such prominent subtextual meaning in this series I’m not sure. Birdsong aside, the discussion between Anathema and Newt raises an interesting point for discussion around Aziraphale’s perception of humans having free will because it would appear that Anathema doesn’t have any – her entire life is lived by writings put down by a descendant hundreds of years previously. I suppose we could argue that she has free will in her choice to follow her pre-destined destiny instead of fighting it and making her own decisions, but I think it’s pretty clear that Anathema doesn’t feel like she has a choice, and that’s really what’s important.

Alright, let’s go find what Crowley’s up to, shall we? Well first off, he’s just ordering his third bottle of Talisker. Not glass; bottle. Which the landlord appears to be very happy to serve him despite the fact that he is absolutely shitfaced. And that he’s ordering it by the bottle. We see Crowley at his most vulnerable in this scene, only really equalled in the Final 15, but at least here his vulnerability is cushioned with a big cloud of drunkenness. We do learn a few things about Crowley’s fall in his drunken ramblings, not least that he was bored in Heaven. The way he sees it, he just joined up with a couple of the cool kids to ask some questions about his job. There’s actually a little bit of extra dialogue in the script book about this:

They say, hey, Crowley, my man, we’re just on our way to discuss the whole job conditions and career advancements thing.

That’s not quite how Heaven tells their side of the story – according to them it was a rebellion with an accompanying war. I’d quite like to know which side has a more accurate memory of the events. Either way, Crowley’s verbal spewing at this point shows us how genuinely destroyed he is at what happened to him as a result of his questioning. Hearing his voice crack during “sulphur” tears me to pieces every time – it’s genuinely devastating. And the way he says Aziraphale’s name when he sees him “sitting” right across the table from him (his arrival announced with one of those stock miracle noises you’ll notice)? How much joy and hope (and love)? Something you can see mirrored in Aziraphale’s expression in the reflection in Crowley’s glasses.

It's pretty obvious that Aziraphale can’t see Crowley in this scene, which just makes the angst run that little bit higher. But at least they can hear each other, and the first thing the angel says sounds almost like an apology:

I’m afraid I’ve rather made a mess of things.

His next thought, despite being extremely short on time to avert Armageddon at this point, is to determine whether Crowley has left without him or not. It’s pretty clear he doesn’t really want to ask the question, fearful of the answer I suspect, and what it would mean for them. Crowley’s got this handled though: a bit of nonchalance to try to cancel out the grief he’s really feeling.

Good job Aziraphale can’t see his face crumple at that point isn’t it? Can’t do much about the voice thick with tears though. I’m not ashamed to say that I misheard Crowley’s line the first time I watched this scene, and when I listened back I’m not surprised I misheard, because to me “lost” in this line doesn’t sound a million miles away from “love”. Deliberately contentious or not, Aziraphale definitely clocks the use of the phrase “best friend”, and you can see (and hear) how touched he is, because Crowley really can only be talking about him.

The angel deals with this revelation in the only way we Brits know how – by putting on a stiff upper lip, ignoring the sentimentality, and getting down to business (well, he is trying to prevent the end of the World I suppose). Poor Crowley is having a genuinely terrible day at this point isn’t he? First his attempt to rescue Aziraphale failed for the first time in 6000 years and now he has to tell the angel that his beloved book shop is burned down. The expression on his face shows how sorry he is to have give Aziraphale the bad news:

Oh, it’s genuinely awful watching Crowley trying to avoid saying the words that he knows Aziraphale will be destroyed by. Hardly surprising when you consider the look of utter devastation on Aziraphale’s face when he asks if it’s all gone.

Crowley tries to find a positive to balance the negative out with, desperate to satisfy Aziraphale’s pleading, but knows there isn’t one. It takes him three attempts to give a simple “yes” answer. And just as we’re all about to start sobbing uncontrollably at this uncharacteristic display of emotional availability from both the angel and demon, spurred on by the horrible injustice of it all that Aziraphale can’t see Crowley and the world being about to end, the mood is lifted at exactly the right moment by the demon’s uncontrollable joy that he, somewhat miraculously, took the one book that he needed as a “souvenir”.

Happy as Aziraphale is that Crowley has the book, it’s pretty obvious that he wants Crowley to be proud of him for working everything out, but Crowley is so desperate to get to the angel that he misses his prompt. It’s very reassuring for us to see that they settle back into their old dynamic of not really listening to each other, and feeling mutually very comfortable with that, regardless of the pressing circumstances and the painful encounters that they’ve been through together in the last 24 hours.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate that Crowley doesn’t wait to be asked to help Aziraphale, or hesitate to pick up his mantle as knight in shining armour? He tells the angel that “wherever” he is, he’ll go to him. That is one devoted demon right there.

And so we arrive at what I think is probably my favourite exchange in the whole of this season. I’m actually not going to delve deep into this interaction because I don’t really think anybody needs me to spell out the double entendres screaming from the subtext here. I tried, multiple times, to put into writing what exactly it was about this little handful of lines that I love so much, and every time I tried I just felt like I was devaluing the whole thing, so I’m just going to put a GIF here instead and you can watch it on a loop as many times as you like (I certainly have). Obviously, there’s no sound, but if you’re anything like me, you can probably hear the soundtrack in your head anyway.

That feels like a pretty good place to stop for this part to me. As always, questions, comments, discussion, all welcome. See you next time 😊

[monstersinthecosmos]

Okay I don’t want this to be like an obnoxious millennial assumption because I’m positive that every generation has things like this, but the way autism and ADHD was treated for us in the 90’s and how it affects adult diagnoses is like, imo, so integral to our coming of age and the stories we tell and the way we’ve gotten to know ourselves, even the way it relates to our job market and economy and how we operate inside it, and especially the way a pandemic uncovered it for so many people and exposed the cracks and revealed that we were all just barely functioning and held together with popsicle sticks and anyway

I say that because maybe it’s the un-diagnosed 90’s child in me but I feel particularly emotional about Keith’s arc in learning that he’s part Galra, and the way even the creators said they made him sort of prickly because of his biology, and I just !! Think so much about Keith’s neurotype as a part Galra!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cause something about being diagnosed later in life is like, looking back at all the other ways you tried to handle yourself, all the missteps, maybe even misdiagnoses. Like, how many times did you try to treat ANXIETY without realizing you didn’t have an anxiety disorder, you just can’t deal with your family blaring the TV from the next room? How many times were you told you were lazy, or lying, when you didn’t know what executive dysfunction is? 

Keith is such a lovely rich character because his prickliness is EARNED—we know what happened to him, we know he’s traumatized, we know he’s been treated poorly by many people in his life. We know that he grew up thinking that he’d been abandoned by one of the people who should’ve loved him the most, in the whole world. He even questions that in his vlog—he makes the connection that he has trouble with people because of his mom. 

But I just wonder like, how much of it is just his biology. Not understanding the body he’s in, being completely ignorant of one whole half of his culture. Had he ever mutated before the TBP fight? Did it take him by surprise, did it frighten him? ((* This is head canon territory LMAO there’s no way to really know—like, is he able to do this because he just spent so much time with Krolia, or does Shiro going That’s the Keith I remember mean they used to have really primal sex that turned his eyes yellow? Lol)) 

Like when we talk about even the most broad generic terms of saying someone is neurodivergent, we don't even need to put a real life label on Keith. Like he's literally not human! Of course his brain looks different! Of course he functions differently! And I wonder how much is nature v nurture -- if he knew the truth about his mom, if his dad had lived, if he'd been allowed a normal childhood, would he still have been a weird kid?

Cause like, even seeing the way Shiro is able to get through to him, we see ways that he allowed for thrill seeking, and he didn't judge Keith for stealing his car. It reminds me of like, what we know now about asking children to sit still in school, and how perhaps some children would do better with standing desks. Shiro wants him to behave and succeed, and doesn't judge him for being a car thief, and gets through to him by bringing him cliff diving. And it just feels like this clue, you know, that nothing is wrong with Keith, he's just living in a weird place where people don't get him.

It’s just really special to me, because there’s so many pieces in the sequence of events of Keith’s character arc, and I know I’ve said this a handful of times now, but I really sincerely believe it’s the only thing the show really nailed. Accepting himself during the BOM Trial -> MOMENTS later learning something very important about his biology -> spending time with Krolia -> coming back to pilot Black when he’s READY and WANTS to (unlike the first time, when he resisted) -> becoming a pragmatic strong leader by the end.

Gosh idk. 

I don’t really have anywhere to go with this, it’s just something I was thinking about today and it gets me real emotional. Like, Keith must have had these moments, re-evaluating who he’d been before he’d known, finally understanding why he was Like That, and it’s so healing to imagine him accepting his past self and forgiving it because he understands now. 

[highwayphantoms]

Happy friday! "Can you walk? I'd be happy to carry you" for Rook/Davrin!

Thank you for the prompt! Had some fun with this one, hehe.

For @dadrunkwriting (VEILGUARD FIC)!

Slight spoilers for the middle of the game, but nothing that spoilery lol.

-

A nice walk in Arlathan Forest with Davrin and Assan. It should have been the easiest, calmest hour of the whole week.

And then they’d taken one wrong step. It was a familiar sequence of events: their ankle went sideways, Aquile collapsed into an awkward heap, and grumbled a halfhearted curse. To add insult to (mild) injury, Davrin had seen the whole thing. Before Aquile could even begin to get back up off the ground, he asked, “You okay, Rook?”

Aquile sighed, exasperated. “Yeah, I’m fine,” they said.

He did not look convinced. “Do you usually fall over for no apparent reason?”

“Just twisted my ankle,” they replied. Not entirely true, but easier than trying to explain that their ankles were wobbly pieces of shit. “Mind giving me a hand up?”

As Davrin stepped closer, Assan dropped from the sky with an inquisitive chirp. The griffon peered at them for a moment, as if assessing whether his presence was needed, then evidently decided it was, as he planted his butt on the ground to watch while Davrin offered Aquile his hand. Aquile took it, and Davrin promptly hauled them back to their feet.

Much to Aquile’s irritation, the ankle that had folded under them twinged painfully as they put weight on it again. “Great,” they muttered under their breath.

“Rook…”

“I might have done slightly more than twisted it.” That was new—in all the times they had rolled an ankle, it had never done any real damage—but then they realized one critical factor. It was the same ankle they’d broken at Weisshaupt. Though they’d fought a fucking Archdemon on it while broken, they thought it had healed up nicely afterwards. Clearly not.

“Can you walk on it?” Davrin asked, his expression entirely too sympathetic for their tastes. “I’d be happy to carry you.”

Their cheeks burning, Aquile glanced away from him. It was ridiculous, really. He was just being nice. There was no reason to be embarrassed. And while Aquile was quite certain they could walk on it—it would just hurt the rest of the way—some part of them very much wanted to take him up on that offer.

Well, fuck. When did that happen?

Not that it was unusual for Wardens to get together. It happened all the time—after all, it was hard to have a relationship with someone who wasn’t privy to the countless secrets you were obligated to protect. Still, that didn’t make it a good idea. Wardens, after all, have a marked tendency to die.

“Uh,” they said, as eloquent as ever. “I mean, I survived Weisshaupt with a broken ankle—”

“And multiple broken ribs, a concussion, and more bruises than Assan has feathers,” Davrin said, deadpan. “None of which you told anyone about. All due respect, Rook, but I think it would be best to head back to the Lighthouse.”

They scowled at him. “And, what, you’re going to carry me halfway across Arlathan Forest?”

“Guess so.” A beat passed, then Davrin shot them a smirk that quite plainly said you don’t fool me.

“Well, if you insist,” Aquile replied with mock offense. “My knight in shining armor, and all that.”

He chuckled and took another step towards them, closing the distance between them to mere inches. Aquile was not that much shorter than he was, and yet he picked them up as easily as if they weighed nothing more than a sack of flour. They made a small, surprised sound, and as undignified as it was to be draped across someone’s shoulders like a hunter’s prize catch, Aquile was far more interested in how warm Davrin was. Feeling rather like a spoiled cat, they settled in for the walk back to the eluvian.Of course, being a healer, Aquile could have fixed their own ankle with a little delicate spellwork, but if it meant getting such dotingon from the big, scary monster hunter, well… who were they to complain?

[chloe-caulfield94]

The Last Temptation of Max Caulfield

Max’s nightmare in Episode 5 (by that I mean the sequence of events beginning with Max losing consciousness at the beach and ending with Max’s confrontation with herself in the Two Whales Diner) is in my opinion one of the most thematically important parts of the game.

The nightmare presents a warped version of reality, where everything is backwards, opposite to the truth.

In Mr Jefferson’s classroom, when Max is presented with a set of dialogue choices, she emphatically says she would never say any of those things.

In the hallway, Kate is resentful towards Max for saving her, even though in reality she was grateful.

In the labyrinth, even characters who have been nothing but friendly to Max, like Warren and Samuel, are hunting her down.

In the bathroom, Max has to enter a code reflected in the mirror – a clever bit of visual storytelling, signifying that everything in the nightmare is backwards.

The entire nightmare is designed to prime Max towards sacrificing Chloe.

The nightmare version of Kate scorns Max for using her power to save her, in an effort to convince Max that sitting idly by when a friend is being murdered is the right thing to do. In the real world, Max made a difference. She saved a life. In the nightmare, she is told she did the wrong thing by helping and she changed nothing.

The nightmare version of David says “it’s pretty ironic he ended up being right about everything”, suggesting that Max and her power were irrelevant to solving the mystery of the Dark Room. While David’s help was instrumental in Max’s escape from the Dark Room, David only got there by following the clues found and pieced together by Max. He even expressed respect for Max’s detective skills. In real life, Max used her power to solve the mystery of Rachel’s disappearance and Kate’s abduction. In the nightmare, she is told it was all for naught.

In the warped version of the Two Whales Diner, the townspeople are accusing Max of murder, pleading for their lives. Even when it makes no sense. Why is Nathan, who is already dead at this point, pleading for his life? Why is Joyce pleading with Max to sacrifice Chloe? Would the real Joyce want to survive at the cost of her daughter’s life? Even more puzzlingly, she says that Max is going to take her away from her family. But her family IS Chloe.

Max’s nightmarish reflection is the personification of all her fears and doubts. She's trying to make her doubt everything she’s done and everything she feels. She’s trying to convince her she chose wrong at each turn. That Max is not good enough for people to like her for who she is. That there’s no way Chloe would want to be her friend if she didn’t have some ulterior motive.

Everything in the nightmare is trying to guilt-trip, bully and strong-arm Max into sacrificing Chloe. No part of the nightmare is designed to sway Max towards sacrificing the town. Even the nightmare version of Chloe is working against the real Chloe, mocking and insulting Max. The real Chloe called Max the “smartest, most talented person she has ever met”, a hero, her best friend. She said Max was kind and caring and that nobody could ask for a better friend. She said Max made her feel like she had a reason to stay in Arcadia Bay. In real life, Chloe admires Max. In the nightmare, she is contemptuous towards her.

The nightmare represents the darkest, most repressed, guilt-driven part of Max’s mind. The part of her mind that always tells her she’s not good enough, she’s a loser, everything she does is pointless, nobody will ever genuinely like her, all the people around her are just using her.

It’s also the part of her mind, so battered with the vile things she experienced during the week, that dreamt up Mr Jefferson talking about digging up Rachel’s corpse to engage in necrophilia. It’s not the most rational part of Max’s mind, to say the least.

If Max chooses to sacrifice Chloe, she capitulates before the darkest, most irrational part of her mind. The part that is usually subdued, but reared its ugly head when Max was at her most vulnerable. She admits that all the apparitions wearing her face and the faces of the people she knows were right. Everything she fought for was pointless. She chose wrong every time. So she might as well take it all back. Her fears and doubts will always defeat her. Just like they convinced her to tear up a photograph that would've won the contest, they now convinced her to reject a relationship that could’ve blossomed into something beautiful, no matter if romantic or platonic.

If sacrificing Chloe is, as some players would argue, the obviously more moral (or at least less evil) choice, why does Max need to be tempted, bullied and guilt-tripped into choosing it? Since when does one have to be tempted to do the right thing?

If sacrificing Arcadia Bay is such an evil and selfish choice, why is the darkest part of Max’s mind hell-bent on convincing her not to do it? Shouldn’t it be other way around?

In what story is following what you were told to do in a terrifying, angry nightmare the right thing to do?

In what story a hero confronted with the dark side of their own mind should capitulate to it instead of triumphing over it?

In contrast to the warped vision of the world in Max’s nightmare, her memories of Chloe, which she goes through before waking up at the lighthouse, are pure. Unedited. Just the way they happened. There’s no anger, resentment and guilt when she goes through the memories of Chloe.

It's a memory of Chloe that stops the nightmare. It was Chloe’s touch that pulled Max out of a dark vision she had at the end of Episode 1. When Max crosses the nightmare version of the junkyard, the only safe haven is a portion of Chloe's hideout.

In my mind, Max’s nightmare represents a last challenge for her to overcome. She is being tempted to commit the gravest of all sins. To reject love (once again, doesn’t matter if romantic or platonic; even if Max has a low romance score with Chloe, she writes in her diary that Chloe is like family to her and that she is about to find out if what’s between them is friendship or love).

Max is being tempted to choose fear over love, doubt over hope, inaction over heroism. To take back everything she has fought so hard for.

At that moment, Chloe has no advocate, save for the memories Max has of her. She even absolves Max of killing her, accepting that it would save some greater purpose.

Hardly a fair fight. On one side all the pent-up anger, guilt, fear and doubt, which spawned a terrifying nightmare. On the other – just memories.

Given that the entire nightmare sequence is designed to guilt-trip the player into sacrificing Chloe, that there’s no equivalent sequence designed to pull the player the other way and that Chloe herself okays her own murder, I’m in awe that 47% of LiS players were able to see past the bullshit. Past the dehumanizing view on morality that reduces lives to numbers, to resources that can be spent to achieve goals.

Max’s nightmare is her last temptation. Something terrifying and malicious, be it a portion of her own mind or some external entity, is tempting her to commit the ultimate sin – to reject love.

In one timeline, Max overcomes this temptation. She withstands the barrage of anger, fear, doubt and guilt unleashed upon her.

In another, she is defeated by a demon wearing her face.

Now tell me, which ending is the good one?

The one in which the hero comes face to face with the sum of their fears and doubts but overcomes it?

Or the one in which the hero comes face to face with the worst version of themselves but instead of rejecting it does its bidding?

[fruitytrollroll]

your writing is so good! what's your process? mostly in regards to how you work with drafts and come up with words. are there any tips you'd give to intermediate writers? love your work!

thank you so much for your compliments!! and I'll gladly answer your questions as best I can! ✨️

one resource i can't possibly recommend enough is wordhippo! it's a clean, efficient thesaurus and dictionary website, which organizes synonyms by their individual meanings, and which also has example sentences—which is a HUGE help in figuring out how unfamiliar words get used, and what kinds of sentences they sound best in. depending on the word, some will even have a subcategory of example sentences from "Classical Literature", which does a good job emulating the experience of encountering a new word in the wild, without having to commit to reading an entire book. on the subject of reading, though, English literature from the Romantic through the Victorian eras are a big inspiration for me, and I tend to try to emulate its constructions, figurative language, tone, and sense of drama in my own writing. a Norton anthology of whatever period of literature you're most interested in will serve you well, if you like to read for your writing—they tend to include poetry, essays, and even short stories and plays, with a lot of helpful footnotes and author biographies.

as for "how I work with drafts"... I'll admit I don't quite know how to answer this, because I often just write things straight out from start to finish? I tend to have a strong idea of where I want to go with a piece already when I've started. But I usually start in Google docs, get about a thousand words out, and then share what I have with a few close friends who are anticipating the piece, and who pump me up with compliments letting me know what's working well. :) lately, most of my writing projects are actually a result of having brainstormed with them in the first place, so they tend to have robust insight into my vision, and offer helpful suggestions and commentary (or they "wishlist" things, i.e. by saying, "oh it would be kinda hot if... 👀🔥" and then I'm just like oh damn, true 💖).

When I'm writing alone, though, I just skip to whatever parts of the story I'm most excited to write, and then stitch the resulting pieces together afterward. I always try to be mindful of the fact that if I'm not having fun writing it, it probably won't be fun for my audience to read, so I tend to "zoom out" or summarize moments that I don't think will be as interesting as where I'm ultimately headed (though I try to inject a little character or wordplay or metaphor or foreshadowing or SOMETHING into even these, to treat my reader while we're waiting for the main event to start. they're helpful for setting tone or setting the stage or setting up expectations for the remainder of the piece). As the author, you can always make time pass faster or slower at your convenience, so make good use of that to maintain interest.

To leave with a few brief kernels of advice: mine your dialogue for conflict; have each line in a conversation refer back to the previous statement whenever you can; don't preemptively solve your characters' problems for them with narrative convenience, because conflict can reveal new and interesting facets of a character that would otherwise go unexamined; you can replace a lot of dialogue tags with action instead, or omit them entirely by implying with vocabulary or sequence which character at any given moment is speaking; if you've written yourself into a corner, start over a few paragraphs before you hit the hump, and see if you can take things in a different direction; give new information, revelations, and emotional beats (or "turns", as my playwriting professor called them) space to breathe.

Also, as an erotic romance author, I cannot help but roll out my frequent refrain: get either really horny or really obsessed with something, because that will motivate you to improve like very little else.

I hope that helps! Let me know if I missed anything, and thank you so much for your kind words and your interest in my process! 🥰✨️

[mephinomaly]

[TL] PYSCHOBREAK/Chapter 6

[ This post uses Ois~su ♪ ]

Time: That day at night

Location: In a training room in ES

Rei: Wanko~♪ Do you want the ball~?

Go fetch~ ☆

Koga 2: Ruff ruuuffffff ☆

Adonis 2: …(Fidgeting around like he wants to play too.)

Rei: Kukuku. He looks human but in reality he’s a newborn baby, such an adorable thing ♪

Kaoru: You get on surprisingly well with the fakes which is pretty good.

—But is that really a good thing, Rei-kun?

Rei: Okay, it’s Adonis-kun's turn now ♪ Why don’t you try to catch this piece of string? You can build up physical strength whilst having fun, isn’t that the best?

Adonis 2: ...♪

Kaoru: I’m happy you’re getting on but hey, are you listening? Can you not ignore me please?

Rei: Of course of course. I will never again allow my gaze to be ripped away from my beloved children who adore me.

Kaoru: Who adores who, did you say?

Rei: —I’ve been thinking.

Kaoru: Hm?

Rei: No matter how much I desire it, I can never be an omnipotent, benevolent god. I suppose that’s clear as I could not predict this situation unfolding.

However, I am slightly older than you all, and it is not as if I spent all my time overseas playing around.

I’m just a tiny bit more experienced onii-chan than you all.

Kaoru: What are you trying to say? You just want to brag about being older? Or do you hate being seen as an old hag?[1] Is this a type of power harassment?

Rei: Kukuku. It’s weird for me not to, Kaoru-kun. Well, there’s nothing I can do in this situation.

We must keep our minds as tranquil as a mountain peak. If our juniors see us seniors fumble, it will create anxiety for them.

Kaoru: Uhuh. Being a senpai is hard work.

So? What are you thinking about?

Rei: Umu. I have no evidence regarding this, all I can do is make guesses on the sequence of events that brought us into this and why it even began to start with.

I have an overall understanding of this situation.

In other words, we now know the truth behind this mysterious set of circumstances.

Kaoru: Wa～, well done! You’re an amazing detective ♪

Rei: Kaoru-kun could have guessed it as well. You are the son of a wise scholar after all.

However, you are a pragmatic child. This case is a bit of an anomaly, and contains unrealistic aspects.

Kaoru: Unrealistic, hm… Ah, I guess that describes it well.

Rei: Umu. Now the question is; how do we escape this situation?

You will understand this analogy, but we are in a locked room. There is only one exit and entrance, and a specific key is required to open them.

However, the key is hidden amongst an endless amount of objects scattered around said room.

Kaoru: It’s like a super difficult ‘escape the room’ game.

Rei: There aren’t any hints though. Unfortunately, there is not enough time to carefully examine each and every item in the room in order to find the key.

We must somehow escape, before the reality we live in warps and breaks down.

Kaoru: Since it’s you, I’m sure you’ve come up with a way to get us out of here. I say that half jokingly ♪

Rei: Umu. I must respond if someone asks something of me, as superstar Rei Sakuma-senpai.

—There is one thing I want to do.

However, it is a dangerous gamble. I am concerned that there may be burdens on the mind and body, primarily on the brain.

Kaoru: Don’t you dare say something all stand-offish like “so that's why I’ll handle it by myself.” If UNDEAD has a problem, then it’s all of our problem. We should share that burden together.

Rei: Kukuku. That’s something old Kaoru-kun would never have said. Now we have been reminded of our past selves, those words deeply move me.

Kaoru: Don’t make fun of me. So, what’s this thing you want to do?

What should we do to get out of this weird situation?

Rei: We need to dream.

When I investigated the AIIE experiment facilities the other day, I happened upon the machines we were connected to, the manuals on how to operate them, and the drugs we were prescribed.

As one could expect, the manuals contained a lot of technical lingo, but with help from a family member who is good at those sorts of things, I was able to come to grips with how it works.

Therefore, if we desire so, we can dream of those days once again.

Visit the memories of when Deadmanz disappeared, and us, UNDEAD, arose.

I suspect our answers will be there.

Kaoru: It’s embarrassing to see me back then being so uptight, but if there’s nothing else we can do, I suppose I can comply.

Rei: Kaoru-kun is still an inexperienced cute boy, hm? I am but a lump of shame.

You may be ashamed of your past self now, but in ten years you may feel the same about your current self.

Let’s do everything in our power now so we do not regret anything in the future.

Will you help me, Kaoru-kun?

Kaoru: Of course I will. I’ve said this a lot already, but this is all of our problem.

Rei: Wonderful… This is also just a guess, but I believe I am the cause behind everything.

Seeds from the past left unwatered grow out of spite. I must reap what I sow, before they can grow anymore.

So this doesn’t happen again. So that I don’t lose anyone again.

[ ☆ ]

Kaoru says 年齢マウント. Not sure if we have a word like that in english but it’s when the eldest of a group of girls (whether idols or just friendship groups) is seen as an old woman despite only being slightly older than the others

Chapter 5

Chapter 7

[luverofralts]

Arkhelios Adventures

The academy was on fire. That's what it looked like anyway. Pulsing, all consuming pinks and purples flashed before Theo's eyes.

This is was the Void looked like, wasn't it? He was so tired, it hurt his brain to remember. This was his school in Pleasantview, nowhere near the demonic Void.

"Adam!" Theo cried out for his boyfriend, recognizing the familiar shape in a blaze of neon light. "Adam, it's me! What are you doing here? What's happening?"

"Adam!"

Theo bolted awake, surprised to feel the bed he was in and not the ground. The last thing he remembered, he was in Crystal Cove, staring at his father's horrified face. How had he gotten home to his own familiar bed in Arkhelios? Where was Adam?

What a nightmare he'd had. Theo had to assume it was a nightmare anyway. He would remember if the demonic Void opened under his school- at least he was pretty sure that he would. But he had been in Crystal Cove, not Pleasantview. He couldn't piece together the sequence of events in his mind. What on earth had happened?

"Dad! Theo's not dead!"

Theo turned and saw his little sister watching him from the comfort of his computer chair.

"Rien? What's going on? How did I get here?"

Adrienne shrugged, spinning around on the computer chair out of boredom.

"Dad brought you home," she answered. "I told him that the spirits weren't calling for you, but he didn't listen. I've been here waiting for you to wake up so he doesn't have a nervous breakdown. He gave Luci $20 for lunch at school even though it's the weekend. She went to her track meet while I've been making sure the spirits stay out of your room. And using your computer. Your digital shrine to Adam is lame by the way. Though it's cute that you want to name your first kid after Dad."

Adrienne nearly doubled over laughing at the horrified look on her brother's face. If Theo's head wasn't still pounding, he would have put up more of a fight against his snooping sister.

"As the Bellamy heir, it makes sense that we name our first son after Dad," he protested weakly. "Roman makes a good middle name too. At least I have a boyfriend, you wouldn't understand. You're just a kid."

Adrienne raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"I had one last month until he got boring. I'm not planning on marrying the first guy I dated and having his stupidly named kids," she laughed. "Speaking of stupidly named kids, Dad's feeding Abe in the kitchen. I'm supposed to send you there if you woke up. Aunt Lucy's here to yell at you."

"What does she want? What happened? Is Adam here too?"

Adrienne shrugged 

"No, Baby Roman Darktide's future dad got sent home. Something about a magical marvel he pulled off that made them reschedule the wedding planning dinner. I think his dad thinks we're going to sue him or something since you collapsed on his watch. Well, that and Aunt Lucy may have threatened him a little."

"He's okay then? The spell worked?"

Theo couldn't read the look his little sister gave him then. It was sad and worried and frustrated.

"You're an idiot," she sighed. "Yes it worked, but there are consequences. The spirits have been whispering about it non stop. Despite what you think, they think of you sometimes too. You should really try to listen for them. They might prevent you from making rash, idiot decisions."

Theo frowned. His little sister had inherited their great-grandmother's spiritual gifts, but despite her claims, Theo had never heard voices call to him. Ever. He would probably remember something as chilling as that.

What was he not remembering? Before the darkness overcame him, he had learned something, something important. He could only hear Adam's voice run through his head. If only he could talk to Adam. Maybe he would remember what happened.

"What consequences? I feel fine," Theo lied. He ignored the headache and the small ringing in his ears. They weren't important.

"I don't know," Adrienne teased. She absolutely knew what had happened. "I'd try something basic at school before you try more advanced magic. You wouldn't want to accidentally misspell your name or anything."

"What?"

"Alright, Abe's clean and changed, ready to try to eat some lunch again."

"Aww, my brother's come so far," Lucy teased, giving her brother a playful smack on the arm. 

"Ha ha," Abe Sr replied. "That never gets old, Luce. How original."

"It's not my fault that you named your bandaid baby after yourself," she laughed. "You could have always named him after me or whatever our bio-sibling goes by these days."

"Funny, but I think naming him Lucifer might make him get teased at school," Abe shot back.

"Hi."

The adults swivelled in their seats to find Theo anxiously watching them.

"Theo! You're awake. Here eat these, you need your strength." Roman dumped a plate of pancakes in front of his son with an embarrassing kiss on his head. If any of his friends had seen, Theo would have been mortified. "There's more pancakes when you finish those."

Theo smiled weakly, quickly brushing the hair his father had messed up.

"Thanks."

As Theo chewed, his aunt cleared her throat, grabbing his attention.

"So, Theo. Do you want to talk about what happened? About the spell you cast?"

Theo paused to collect his thoughts.

"Adam thought he had a brother," he said at last. "I met this guy who claimed to be his half-brother and we wanted to make sure. So I cast the equivalent of a paternity test. I just borrowed access to his bloodline to do it."

Lucy sighed in relief.

"Oh thank god. We were afraid you'd gone and done something stupid like demonic marriage or a deal like your idiot parents."

"Hey!"

"Your spellwork was masterful if that was what you were aiming for," Lucy praised. "You're doing so well in your studies and completely understanding the coursework. Your Aunt Alexis wants you to tackle much harder spells because of this. You're growing faster in your abilities than we ever thought. Good job."

Theo wasn't used to praise for his schoolwork, especially when his schoolwork ended with someone teleporting him while unconscious to recover in his bed at home. Any praise from his aunt was also suspicious, but he wasn't going to complain if she wanted to compliment him.

"If it all went so perfectly, why did my son collapse? Why did that warlock boy need to hang on to their spell to keep him safe?"

Lucy frowned for a moment, thinking her next words carefully.

"Two reasons," she said finally. "One, because you got too close to your feelings. You care about this boy and his feelings for the subject of your spell. Blood magic is personal and if you don't put up boundaries, you overinvest yourself and burn out. Cast spells for friends or acquaintances, never for love; never to soothe your loved one. You fall too deep and it takes too much from you. Start with people you don't care strongly about and then when you've learned control, open your spells to loved ones. It takes practice that you will learn in time. If you give too much of yourself, you don't know how you will change because of it and you will change. You have already."

"Changed how? Is he sick? Dying?"

Roman stared at his sister in law, trying to hide his fear. He was once the calm, cold heir to the Bellamy fortune and now he couldn't even leave his son unattended at a dinner party. When did the stress and worry ever end?

"He's fine, Roman. Does he look like he's dying?"

Roman looked at the teen currently shoving giant forks of pancake in his mouth. Theo did look fine, though he'd learned the hard way that looks can be deceiving when it came to demonic magic.

"I don't understand the complexities of blood magic, but your aunt says it's like a legal merger. Borrowing access to someone's bloodline that you have feelings for leaves traces behind, complications that need to be negotiated. You're supposed to meet with your headmaster when you get back to school on Monday to talk about this. He may have some insight to guide you."

"Reason number two that this ended dramatically is a lot simpler than you think. Theo was born cursed, that's not up for debate. However, that magic is bound to him, no matter if the curse was ended or not. It formed with him at conception; it's a part of him now.

"My mother is gone, and my grandmother is dead," Roman protested. "That whole mess is done. Theo is going to be fine. That's in the past."

Lucy frowned.

"That curse, like it or not is a part of him. A part of him that's been severed, but a part nonetheless. It's like a severed limb. It still has everything that makes Theo who he is in it. Even without the curse attached to him, his blood still calls out for it whenever his focus is too heavily on himself. It's something that he' going to have to compensate for in the future."

"A dead curse is just hanging around me? Like a magnet?" Theo asked. "Always?"

"Always," Lucy affirmed, uncharacteristically kind. Her brother in law looked like he could faint at any moment. "But it's never going to be active again. Think of it like a crack on your windshield. You know it's there, it obstructs your view when you try to drive like you normally would and you have to navigate your vision around it to drive properly. "

"Were you the one who cracked Mom's windshield?" Abe teased. "I told her it was you but she never believes me."

"You understand, right?" Lucy said, ignoring her brother. "You're not going to have a panic attack about this like the brave demon hyperventilating beside the stove?"

Theo nodded.

"I think so. Don't cast spells for Adam until I have more control and I need to figure out how to push away anything that might be summoned when I draw power to myself."

"Great! I think that was all I needed to discuss," Lucy concluded. "I have some documents waiting for me in my office now that you're feeling better. Demonic law stops for no one, not even the Sovereign's spouse and this case is important. Try to stay out of trouble, Theo. Your poor father is going to go grey by thirty five at this rate."

Theo froze. Around him, he could hear chairs scraping and his parents' voices. Abe threw his bottle on the ground, spilling formula everywhere.

Too slept next to Renarde, unaware of her master. Theo could feel his mind call to her reflexively, looking for magical assistance from his familiar.

"Your dad is going to go grey" why does that bother me? There was something that I've forgotten. Something important.

"Oh, Theo! I forgot to ask to about Adam," Lucy called, jarring the teen from his thoughts. "Does Adam have a brother? Did the spell at least work for all the trouble it caused?"

The spell....

Theo's mind raced, remembering how the air around Ewan and Adam crackled with power. How their blood called out to him, screaming that they were connected inescapably by their father.

"Yeah, he has a brother," Theo replied, his mind still racing to sort out his thoughts. "They-"

"You'll make your father go grey." Your father. Adam has a brother. Dad will go grey...Grey like his daughter.

In the hall, Lucy was rambling about child support and how Adam's father might want to get a lawyer to protect him from this mysterious new son of his, but Theo wasn't paying attention. Instead, his mind raced trying to remember the specifics of what he saw at the castle before he passed out.

I saw it. Victoriana, she and I had the same connection Adam and Ewan did. She's my sister. My sister is the future queen of Pleasantview. Why hasn't anyone told me this? Who else knows about this?

Georgiana was easy to figure out because of math and because of her appearance. Was Victoriana just as obviously his sister and Theo was simply too young to remember? His father never seemed to worry about the Pleasantview princess the same way he stressed out reading about Georgiana taking her first steps in the gossip magazines. He never disappeared on Victoriana's birthday to go sit out in the yard drinking heavily like he did for Georgiana's.

I don't think he knows.

It was the only conclusion Theo could come to. If his father knew, he'd be pacing the floors, worried that Victoriana might be traumatized by watching her half-brother collapse. But if he didn't know, then who did? Did the queen know for certain or did she just have a list of potential fathers to work from?

When had this happened? Theo tried to remember the princess' birthday. She was what, a year younger than him? A year and a half? Close enough to Luci and Rien's age that he would guess that his parents had been broken up at the time. His father might not have even been married to Adrian at the time. Should he look up tabloids from a decade ago to check?

Did he want to tell his parents about this information if they didn't already know? What would the consequences be if he did? Would it make his dad as upset as he was about Georgiana? The queen of Pleasantview would probably keep him from the princess' life, just like Aunt Ulyssa had. Would he be disrupting his half-sister's life if he did tell someone? If he were in her shoes, what would he want?

He couldn't decide what the right thing to do was. He'd ask Adam whenever his own family was done having their own family discussions. If it had to wait to Monday at school, Theo supposed he could wait. There was no way he wanted a text that anyone could read out in the open. A topic this serious needed to be a face to face conversation in absolute secrecy.

He stood, numbly ignoring his parents and aunt who were still going on and on about legal obligations to children. He needed time to process all of this. He needed time alone to learn how to shoulder this burden.

"Which princess are you thinking about? The one we don't talk about or the future queen?"

Theo turned around to find Adrienne following closely behind him.

"Y-you knew?"

Adrienne shrugged, as if this weren't earth shattering news.

"It was in the cards," she explained. "I've known for a while. The queen shows up in my readings all the time with her daughter. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why when the kid has no known father and our father is as...fertile as he is. Aunt Maura knows, but no one else. I asked the spirits about it many times and each time it's just me, Aunt Maura and the queen who knows. I guess you're added to that list now too. Welcome to the club."

The frowned, unnerved by his sister's relaxed assessment of this news.

"Why haven't you told Dad? Should he know? I mean, I don't plan on telling him, but he should know, right? It feels wrong not to tell him." Theo paused. "Why aren't you mad about this? Should I feel mad? This is just more evidence that Dad slept around his entire life and still couldn't figure out how to use birth control and who knows how many other half-siblings we have or if they're upset at us for being raised by Dad and-"

Theo was cut off from his ramblings by his sister's arms wrapping firmly around him in a comforting hug.

"You think too much," she declared. "Try listening to the spirits for once in your life. They say it's not time to act, but the time is coming soon. This will all come out when it's supposed to, don't worry."

"If you say so," Theo replied, hugging his little sister back. "I still don't hear them, no matter how hard I listen, but I'm glad that you can. You're really lucky."

"Trust me, it's really more of a curse to hear them," she stated. "I know things that I definitely don't want to know about. The spirits aren't ever shy about what they want to talk about. "

"Fair enough. You let me know when the spirits think that this needs to be addressed. I'll try not to worry until then."

"Deal."

"Oh, and Theo? "

"Yes?"

"None of the adults wanted to tell you or are too dumb to figure it out, but your stupid plan with Adam changed your true name and left a residual connection to the Maricourt family in your blood that you'll probably have for the rest of your life. Oh, and watch out for red heads. Something big is coming for you, something you don't want to tick off."

"What?!"

[anony-man]

Heyyyyyy guys wrote something else. Again, based off of @rust-bearer’s OTHER post found here. That’s all, so. Also OP I’m probably done writing stuff to go with your posts now but in the future if you’re ever like “please don’t bother tagging me just post the link for the original post” just let me know. Was gonna finish this last night by I was tired so I just went to bed instead lol.

This is G1 First Aid and Vortex by the way. Also, I WILL be posting this to ao3, I said with the last one I that wouldn’t be but haha I lied it’ll be there later today or something, I don’t know yet.

It was probably wrong to stare, Vortex knew, but that didn’t exactly stop him from doing so.

When he had originally swept in and plucked the little medic off of the battlefield before taking him back to their base, Vortex hadn’t expected such a depressing reaction. He’d captured plenty of bots in the past before (he’d also captured a human here and there, but Megatron didn’t know that, so Vortex wasn’t about to gloat), and the usual sequence of events went a little something like this: the prisoner would panic, then try to flee, then get aggressive (this was Vortex’s favorite part, since it gave him an excuse to rile the prisoners up a little), but at the end of the day, they always ended up drawing in on themselves and either refused to give up anything valuable or spilled everything all at once so they could finally be free of him.

The little Autobot medic, though? Vortex couldn’t remember his name, but he remembered his face, and Vortex knew for a fact that he’d never, ever seen the poor thing look so despairing.

Vortex was not empathetic, not on any level. It wouldn’t look good for a mech of his title, after all. Besides, he enjoyed the pleasure that came from tormenting his chosen prisoners far too much to waste any time caring for their feelings. When it came to the little medic, however, something felt different. It was almost like kicking a stray cyber-puppy, terrorizing the poor Autobot, and even he wasn’t cruel enough to do that.

It had been a pretty normal mission, as far as Vortex was concerned. Yet another mindless battle had found him lazily drifting through the air and scanning the grounds below for anything of interest. The medic’s paint job had stuck out to him almost immediately, which… well, that was normal, wasn’t it? Either way, a quick check-in with an exasperated Onslaught had given Vortex the go-ahead on taking the medic in as a Decepticon captive, if only to appease Vortex’s ridiculous desires. He didn’t have any other responsibilities, so it didn’t hurt, and Vortex always got a kick out of bringing the little medic back with him.

First Aid didn’t stay long—he never did, really, which was disappointing—but he always stayed long enough for Vortex to get his fix before the remaining Protectobots were pounding on the doors and begging for their arm back. Today, though? Today, Vortex was almost hoping they’d come by early. He wasn’t about to tarnish his reputation and give up the medic himself, but he wasn’t quite sure how much longer he could stand to watch.

The door’s window was high, so Vortex had to really crane his neck and stand on the tips of his pedes to see through. It was one-way glass, at least, so he was safe knowing the Autobot on the other side couldn’t catch a glimpse of him peering through the window, optics narrowed behind his visor as he struggled to piece together what his little prisoner was up to. The room was soundproof, so Vortex couldn’t hear anything, but from the way the little medic sat huddled in the farthest corner of the berth (it was a thin metal slab, really, but he called it a berth) with his legs to his chest and his helm buried in his servos, he had a feeling his prisoner wasn’t having the best time.

Weird, he thought. They hadn’t even started playing, and the Autobot was already miserable.

“What’s he doing?”

Vortex was startled by the sound of Onslaught’s voice from behind, though he did his very best not to let it show. He gave up on getting a good look through the glass and rocked back on his heels, a little huff of annoyance slipping through gritted teeth. He was just about to get to the bottom of why his favorite prisoner was looking so glum—why had Onslaught chosen now of all times to interrupt?

“He’s just sitting there,” Vortex shrugged, taking a step back to let Onslaught have a look. Privately, he detested the way Onslaught didn’t even show an ounce of struggle with looking through the glass, his frame large enough to accommodate the strange door design. Really though, who put a window up that high up anyway? “Hasn’t moved an inch.”

“Weird,” Onslaught said, voicing Vortex’s previous thoughts. He fell silent for some time, simply staring through the window and studying their prisoner—Vortex’s prisoner, really, but a prisoner nonetheless. “Have you gone inside there yet? Your little pet might be lonely.”

Vortex gave an indignation scoff and a stomp of his pede, his arms crossing over his chest. “He’s my prisoner,” he corrected, “not my pet.”

Onslaught simply rolled his optics. “Whatever. Megatron has ordered us to go back out for a second wave in a few hours, so I suggest you start wrapping things up in here. His gestalt won’t be happy to have him gone during an active siege.”

Vortex didn’t have to think about it too much to know Onslaught was very delicately scolding him for choosing today of all days to kidnap his Autobot again, but he decided not to respond. Onslaught did have a point, after all, and bad mood or no, he was going to get as much out of his favorite Autobot prisoner as he could before the Protectobots came for him.

Vortex waited for Onslaught to leave before scurrying off to their energon storage to grab a container for the little medic. After making sure the coast was clear, and that Blast Off wasn’t lingering around the corner and waiting to berate him for wasting their resources on an Autobot, Vortex headed back to the holding cell. He stood outside the door for a good few seconds, stuck debating on whether or not he should just let it slide this once and leave the Autobot to his own devices, but eventually decided that a little conversation couldn’t hurt. Once his mind had been made up, Vortex punched in the door’s code and then stepped inside.

There was no reaction from the little medic, which surprised Vortex. Even when he sealed the door shut behind him and headed for the berth to set the cube of energon down before quickly scrambling back, the Autobot didn’t move. He was quiet, save for the soft, shuddering breaths and sniffles every few seconds.

Vortex was perplexed, to say the least. Usually the little medic was already sat on the berth watching the door, as though waiting for him to come inside. They weren’t exactly on friendly terms, but he’d never seen the not so closed off before. He was just about to say something when the medic shifted, lifting his helm from where it remained buried in his servos and knees with an audible sniff.

“Uhh… hi,” Vortex said, unsure of how else to approach the conversation. When he got no response out of his prisoner other than another teary sniffle and watery optics that studied him from behind a blue visor, he continued. “You, um… you good? You want some energon or something?”

The medic’s helm turned just a bit, his gaze drifting down to the energon sitting next to him on the berth. Vortex felt a little hopeful now; maybe that was the problem, maybe his little prisoner was just a little hungry. Instead of making any move to accept the offer of fuel, however, the medic just gave another shuddering sigh and wrapped his arms around his legs, letting his helm come down to rest against his knees.

“It ain’t poisoned,” Vortex chuckled awkwardly, gesturing with a servo to the energon before crossing his arms back over his chest. “I mean—well, yeah, you can’t exactly trust my team not to pull something stupid like that, but… but it’s probably fine.”

Still nothing. Vortex’s frown deepened, and he began tapping a pede against the floor as he studied his prisoner’s prone form.

Was he sick? Had Vortex accidentally taken an infected bot into custody? The medic had taken his mask off sometime between arriving and being put in the room, and while Vortex liked getting the chance to see the face beneath, he could tell by the streaks of lubricant that glistened in the room’s dim lighting that his captive had been crying.

Primus, how on earth was he supposed to deal with that?

It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen a bot crying before—quite the opposite, really. Still, there was something about seeing the little Autobot medic so distraught that had Vortex’s innards twisting with guilt. There was nothing pleasant about the sight, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why.

“You know,” he said, nervously wringing his servos and fidgeting with his fingers as he looked the medic over. “If you want, I could probably go back out and grab one of your little combiner pals. Onslaught wouldn’t even have to know. It’d be really quick, and maybe then you’d—“

At first, Vortex wasn’t quite sure what the sound was or where it was coming from, but a low, keening whine cut him off almost immediately. Vortex recoiled at the sound, watching in mild horror as the little medic curled back in on himself, his shoulders shaking with deep, gut-wrenching sobs. It was the sort of sound he’d expect a human fleshbag to be capable of making, not a fellow Cybertronian, so to say he was surprised to hear such noises coming from his prisoner would have been an understatement.

“Oh,” he hissed, mouth twisted in a grimace behind his mask. “Oh, slag. Slag, sorry—I’m sorry, that was… that wasn’t—yeah. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”

As the Autobot continued to tremble and sob, Vortex took a few cautious steps forward, servos extended as though he were approaching a wild animal. He stopped halfway across the room, his resolve faltering, and briefly considered just walking away and requesting backup from Swindle or something. Swindle was good with most bots, Vortex thought. He’d know what to do in this situation.

Still, throwing it onto someone else’s shoulders just seemed like a cop-out. He was the interrogator, after all. A reaction like this should have been right up his alley—he should have been enjoying the emotional display. But… he wasn’t.

Hesitantly, Vortex crept closer to the berth until he was practically towering over the huddled ball of tears and plating. He reached out slowly, a shaky servo coming down to rest against the medic’s visible shoulder. After receiving no backlash for the move, Vortex took a more confident approach and crawled up onto the berth right next to the Autobot. It was slow, and it was awkward, but with a bit of patience, Vortex managed to position himself so that he was curled up next to the crying medic, one servo still patting his shoulder plating in what he hoped was a comforting gesture.

Vortex knew for a fact that this wasn’t something he’d ever get used to, but there was something interesting about knowing how vulnerable and how human his prisoner could be, given just the right circumstances.

[resurrection-of-soul]

Flashback | PSYCHOBREAK 6

Writer: Akira (日日日)

Characters: Rei, Koga, Adonis, Kaoru

Rei: If indeed these are seeds sown by my own hands, I must now pluck them ere they deepen their roots. To ensure I never repeat this folly, and to ensure I do not lose anyone ever again.

[ For the best viewing experience, please read directly on my blog! ♪ ]

Time: That night. In a practice room inside the ES building.

Rei: Look here, Puppy ♪ What's this I have? A cute little ball~? You desire it, do you not? Go get it~! ☆

Koga II: [Wooooof! ★]

Adonis II: [...... (He's fidgeting like he wants to play too.)]

Rei: Kukuku. Despite their perfect resemblance to Koga and Adonis, these two are truthfully but newborn babes. How precious ♪

Kaoru: It's nice that the fakes are surprisingly easy to get along with, but, like… Are you really sure this is okay, Rei-kun?

Rei: Come now, 'tis Adonis-kun's turn next ♪ Wouldst thou not pull upon the other end of this rope I'm holding? It shall give thy muscles a workout, and, moreover, 'twould be a most enjoyable pastime. Delightful, is it not?

Adonis II: [……♪]

Kaoru: The fact you're besties now is cool and all, but are you, like, even listening? You wanna try not ignoring me?

Rei: But of course I am not ignoring you. Never again shall I avert my gaze from the beloved children who yearn for me.

Kaoru: Who the heck is yearning for you?

Rei: …I find myself pondering a few things.

Kaoru: Hm?

Rei: Naturally, even if others wish it of me, I am not an omniscient, omnipotent god; such a feat would be beyond me even if I, too, wished it so. My inability to predict this peculiar predicament attests to that truth. Nevertheless, I stand a tad older than the rest of you, and 'tis not as though I ventured overseas simply to seize a rare opportunity to engage in indolence. In comparison to you all, I am akin to an older brother with just a tad bit more life's experience.

Kaoru: So like, what's your point? Are you trying to brag about being older? Pushing people around cause they're younger than you is, like, seriously hateable y'know? It's, like, power harassment or whatever, okay?

Rei: Kukuku. How uncharacteristically agitated you are, Kaoru-kun. Well, 'tis inevitable in these circumstances. Keep thy heart calm as the surface of a still lake. Should the elder ones begin to sink, the younger ones shall be beset with unease.

Kaoru: I know, I know. Acting like a proper senpai is tough, huh? So? What was it you were thinking about?

Rei: Yes, well. Though I have no concrete evidence at this point, I have a general idea about what sequence of events which led to these peculiar circumstances. I have also gained a rough understanding of our current predicament. In other words, I suspect I've grasped the truth behind this mysterious situation we've found ourselves in.

Kaoru: Oooh, as expected! Amazing, guess the case is closed¹ ♪

Rei: 'Tis not so remarkable. Given enough time, you most probably could have pieced it together as well. You are the son of a wise scholar, after all. However, you are a pragmatic child. This case must present a bit of a challenge for you, given the unrealistic elements involved.

Kaoru: By unrealistic elements, you mean… Ahhh, so it really is like that after all, huh?

Rei: Indeed. The question now is, how may we extricate ourselves from this situation? You will surely understand this metaphor: we find ourselves in a locked room. There exists only one exit, and to open it, a special key is required. Yet this key lies hidden amongst countless objects strewn about the confines of the room.

Kaoru: It's like a high-difficulty escape room.

Rei: Aye, one with no hints provided. More unfortunate still, there is not time enough to scrutinize each object one by one in search of the key. Yet, somehow, we must escape before the reality we live in becomes distorted and collapses in on itself.

Kaoru: Well, since it's you we're talking about here, you've probably already come up with some way to get us out. That's totally just wishful thinking, though ♪

Rei: If someone makes a wish, then as Superstar Sakuma Rei-senpai, it is my job to fulfill it.

Rei: …There is one method I wish to try. However, it involves a rather risky gamble. I bear some concern about the great burden it might place upon the body, specifically the brain.

Kaoru: "That's why I, alone, shall do it." You weren't about to say some stand-offish thing like that, right? UNDEAD's problems are everyone's problems, so let's share the burden.

Rei: Kukuku. My, now there are words you never would have spoken in the past. Having so recently been reminded of our former selves, those words resonate with the weight of profound emotion. I am deeply touched.

Kaoru: Don't make fun of me. So? What is it you want to try? How are we going to get ourselves out of this crazy situation?

Rei: We dream. During my investigation of the AIIE Experimental Facility the other day, I thoroughly inspected the equipment we were connected to, the drugs we were prescribed, as well as the manuals on how to handle it all. As one might expect, 'twas so full of technical terms as to be quite difficult to parse, but with the help of someone in my clan who is good with such things, I was able to roughly understand its contents. Thus, should we desire it, we may once more return to the dream of those days long gone— To the memories of that time when DEADMANZ faded away, and we, UNDEAD, awoke. The answer most likely awaits us therein.

Kaoru: Back into that dream again, huh? It's, like, seriously embarrassing having to watch my past self act out like that, but if there's no other way then I guess that's that.

Rei: Your youthful aura in those days still bore an aspect of endearing charm. Meanwhile, I was naught but a bundle of shame.

Rei: Yet even the person I am now, who is ashamed of who he was in days past, may well be regarded as shameful by the person I become a decade hence. Thus, let us exert our efforts in the present to forestall any future regrets. Wouldst thou assist me in this endeavor, Kaoru-kun?

Kaoru: That goes without saying, doesn't it? I'll tell you this as many times as I have to: this isn't just your problem, it's ours too.

Rei: I wonder if that is truly the case… 'Tis still mere speculation, but I suspect I am to blame for this incident.

Rei: Seeds left unwatered in days past have sprouted malevolently in spite, afflicting us with their curse. If indeed these are seeds sown by my own hands, I must now pluck them ere they deepen their roots. To ensure I never repeat this folly, and to ensure I do not lose anyone ever again.

[ ☆ ]

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Literal tl for this line is "amazing, [you're a] great detective." But in JP, the series Detective Conan is "Great Detective Conan, and the phrase "great detective" is practically synonymous with it. I've thrown the reference in using the American title of the show instead, since there is absolutely no way to make "detective" an obvious reference to Conan.

[boinin]

2024 check-in

It's been a while since I talked about Cassis Orange here. For those wondering, I still don't have a concrete ETA on when I'll publish the next chapters. I'm actively writing the final chapters as of now however, after a few false starts and writers' block. All I can say from here is, I'll keep people posted 🐞

For anyone interested in behind-the-scenes rambling about my writing process, more below the cut.

What's holding things up? Well, I like to finish a full draft of a piece, allow myself some breathing space from it, before going back to review, edit and weave together the chapter's themes and ideas.

Emphasis on "finish a full draft". That's a mistake I've made with Cassis Orange. I've always had sight of the destination, and the scenes needed to get the characters there, but not always how these scenes should join up or how they ought to flow.

In addition, nailing down themes and authentic character growth has been challenging. Lastly, the gap between writing chapters 1-8 and writing 9-10 has slowed progress, as I end up needing to re-read what's already there for consistency.

None of this is to the fic's detriment (I hope), but it's knocked my own motivation at times. "Done is better than perfect" is a motto I continually remind myself of. It's taking me longer than I'd like, that's just life. But I remain excited to finish the story, which is the main metric of concern 😉

Anyway, why is finishing a full draft so important?

Well...

Here's a quick look at my old drafts folder:

Chapter 9's main difficulty, despite me knowing exactly what needs to happen, is hitting the right emotional notes and character milestones. I've already made three distinct stabs at the same scenes, none of which really achieve what I want them to.

Thankfully, these particular issues aren't on the same scale as what I faced with Chapter 7. shudders I am confident about where to go next.

If you're wondering, IMO the best solution to this issue is to just... write them anyway. See the events out, imperfect as they may be. It's more insightful to revise a dysfunctional scene from beginning to end, than a half-baked draft that tails off in author despair and confusion.

A recurring mistake, which I'll try to learn from going forward.

|| Spoilers for published chapters of Cassis Orange start here! ||

This is my note on the oldest draft (which I first started in May, apparently?? holy fuck). Because I wrote out of sequence, the Chapter 9 I'd started doesn't align with the direction Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 took. In fact, it's different enough from what I want to convey that I've considered recycling the draft into its own fic. May still do, but not before I finish CO.

The "Kunigami Sadboi" draft is exactly what it sounds like lmao. In short, I sketched out some angsty scenes in his POV that take place between chapter 7 and chapter 8. Alexa, play I'm Not Okay (I Promise).

Ultimately, I determined these don't fit the vibe of the Chapter 9 I want to publish. But they served a valuable creative purpose. Even if it's not spelled out for you (the hypothetical reader), it's important that the writer (me) and by extension, the characters, know what happened off-screen.

These drafts are imperfect. But now that I'm carving out the final Chapter 9, I can cherry-pick ideas and imagery from them. No writing goes to waste, even if it's destined to lounge in your drafts folder for all eternity.

Anyway, if you've got this far, you deserve a medal. Instead, have a snippet of how Chapter 9 could have looked, had I hit publish on that older version. Featuring out-of-character weepy Chigiri and indulgent author moralising via Kunigami!

I'm irrationally fond of this moment, though it doesn't hold up for a number of reasons. It's what the idiom kill your darlings refers to. I can like this excerpt, and it may have some merit, but it doesn't serve the narrative at large. So it dies, along with the 15,000 other words that didn't quite hit the mark 🥲

Here's another snippet, from Kunigami's sadboi days:

Again, something I personally enjoyed writing. Kunigami's dynamic with his kids is something I treasure a lot about this AU. It's simply one of those scenes that's best kept to headcanon, due to the shape I want Chapter 9 to take.

[tame-a-messenger]

Sorry if this has been asked but do you have a favorite Damien & Angela moment/video?

I have a couple,

Damien's hereditary musical bit is definitely up there! Angela being almost lost for words at how good it was and Damien looking so proud and giddy. Just ugh, so cute.

Don't Lose Mario Party!: Charity live is probably my favorite video. The thing is filled with so much interaction and is a defining moment for me starting this blog! If you like this duo I recommend you watch it!

The "I know what you sound like" fiasco is another really fucking funny moment. Really just a cinematic master piece, from the ABSOLUTE CONFUSION of Damien saying "Angela said she knows what I sound like having sex" infront of THOMAS FUCKING SANDERS?? having the whole comment section BLOW UP asking what the hell that was referencing and having to wait to see what it was. Then finally getting the video and it was Angela accidentally eluding to her and Damien SLEEPING TOGETHER?? LMAO. Her and him FREAKING OUT about it and trying to refute it (obviously they didn't lmao) the whole thing will go down in Smosh history as one of the funniest sequence of events.

There's more but those are the top (As of rn anyway)